News, features & insights from the world of SportsTech. Every Week.
Happy 2024 everyone!
Promises to be quite a year for the SportsTech investment landscape. We’ve shared some early thoughts below. Plus a news recap from the last 3 weeks that we’ve been away so there’s plenty to go over. On with it then.
We’ll be back to our regular weekly schedule now on.
Feature Story
SportsTech Investment landscape in 2024: What to expect
Better, is the short answer.
2023 was a tough year if you were a startup looking for funding. But will it get worse before it gets better? We think not.
There are signs already that the investment landscape is opening up.
- Nov & Dec 2023 saw a flurry of investment activity. It was the only time in 2023 where consecutive months had $175m+ / month of dealflow. Data from our SportsTechDB.
- We’ve gone on about it for a while but there is a lot of dry powder out there waiting to be deployed with new SportsTech focused funds announced regularly. And we started the year with 2 new requests from investors to be added to our SportsTech Map.
- The general forecast for the overall VC landscape is more optimistic.
Yes interest rates are still high, geopolitical conflicts persist, as does the general ‘AI will steal my job’ sinking feeling. We’re not saying everything is rosy, far from it.
Instead, ‘Cautiously optimistic’ is the best way to describe our perspective for 2024. As valuations get more attractive, due diligence gets more robust and growing Sports & SportsTech markets open up further (Indian, Brazil, Middle East), we really believe it’ll be a busy fundraising season.
We have high hopes for you 2024. Let’s go.
In case you haven’t yet, to access our latest SportsTech VC Report you can…
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Top News from the World of SportsTech
💥 Major League Soccer launched their innovation program MLS Innovation Lab with 6 startups selected to their inaugural cohort.
🛍️ Interactive video tech provider TheTake has partnered with DAZN to allow viewers to shop directly from their screens and in real time during live sports programming.
🚲 UK based ebike startup Skarper has partnered with Red Bull F1 to develop a device that can turn any bicycle into an electric-powered bike.
⚽ Silicon Valley based f2o Sports are looking to invest in a football club exclusively by crowdfunding the money, targeting the Spanish market. La Liga club Granada, along with Fuenlabrada, Sabadell and Talavera are among the top candidates.
🕶️ Gangwon 2024 (Winter Youth Olympics) lunched a first of it’s kind metaverse experience for Youth Olympic fans.
🏌️ Golf content platform Golfweek has announced an inaugural Tech Lab event slated for Mar 2024 bringing together various stakeholders and startups.
📣 Apple Fitness+ introduced several new upgrades including a new meditation theme, a new workout program for Golfers, artist spotlights and new celebrity guest episodes to its audio experience “Time to Walk”.
Not SportsTech but you should know:
🏈 New Zealand Rugby members proceed with a $39.24 million capital raise under its existing Silver Lake underwrite which provided certainty.
🤝 Streaming giants Disney and Reliance Industries enter a non-binding agreement to merge Hotstar and Viacom 18 in India, which will see cricket and other major sports rights under one owner.
🏃♀️ The first ever season for award winning app ATP Carbon Tracker has seen more than 200 ATP players engage and 6.55 million km of travel tracked this year.
🏒 Tiger Woods and Nike have concluded their 27 year partnership, during which time Woods is estimated to have earned north of $500 million.
Money Talks:
💰 Switzerland based fitness rewards app Muuvr raised $4.16 million funding round which exceeded their original funding target.
💰 Maryland based workplace well-being startup Forte raised $3.3 million in a seed funding round which follows their $1.5 million pre-seed round from last year.
💰 UK based FanHub have raised $3 million to build the ‘Strava for sports fans’
💰 California based Play Caller, a social micro fantasy SportsTech platform raised an undisclosed amount in pre seed funding.
💰 Cici Bellis’ Cartan Capital made their first investment of $250k in hologram tech firm Proto as part of their $5 million fundraise.
💰 Leading D2C online fitness platform Gymondo acquired Berlin based 7Mind to create an all round platform for physical and mental fitness and wellbeing.
Latest from our Channels
🎙️ #191 Mingle Sport: Revolutionizing Grassroots Ball Sports with Computer Vision A.I.
To kickoff the podcast lineup for the year, in this week’s episode we have Freek Bijl, Co-Founder and CEO of Mingle Sport- a Sports Tech startup that’s building your favorite ball sports app for grassroots players, trainers and their fans. Watch the full video here.
📣 Here’s a 60 mins snapshot of the most important findings from SportsTechX’s latest Global SportsTech VC Report 2023. Covering data & insights from another interesting year for SportsTech.
💸 Sports Tech AllStars Recap: VC’s in SportsTech
⚡ STX Weekly: Last newsletter of 2023, in case you missed it.