Sports Tech Stays Hot: Reviewing Q2

Lots of new subscribers this past week, so a quick overview of what you can expect.

• Wednesday: In-depth research report + podcast

• Friday: Relevant breakdown + podcast + weekly news roundup

Something else to note…

I only dig deeper into what I find interesting (not every article or podcast will interest you, but with a 55% open rate I’m assuming most will).

Feel free to check out the full website here: profluence.com

Let’s dive in 👇

Sports Technology H1 2023

You may have seen some tidbits from Drake Star’s report on the state of sports technology/business.

Anyway, I went through the whole thing and want to showcase the key points (along with my thoughts).

Sports Investments Funds

Through the first 6 months of 2023, we’ve seen “sports investment firms” raise ~$6B USD.

Highlighting a few:

• RedBird Capital: $2.3 billion

• Dynasty Equity: $1 billion

• Isos7: $770 million

• Raine Group: $760 million

• Fasanara: $500 million

• Bluestone Equity: $300 million

• Sapphire Ventures: $181 million

• Courtside Ventures: $100 million

However, compared to prior quarters, the last three months didn’t see a lot of private financing activity (~$1.6 billion).

Drake Star claims 75% of the private investments were for early-stage companies.

We apparently have a different definition of “early-stage” — as I would say that seems a high.

To Note: I follow fundraising closely and have not seen too many pre-seed/seed companies receive funding so far this year (minus this last week 😆)

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As)

It was a big 3 months of M&As with $14.5 billion in deals completed.

Expect M&A to continue increasing…

As you saw above, there is a lot of new capital in the industry looking to be deployed.

I expect organizations like Fanatics, RedBird, PIF-Saudia Arabia, and others to continue making moves (think large roll-ups and a strong flow of mid-size deals).

Public markets are shaky, but I could see sports tech companies like Hudl start exploring IPOs as well.

Sports Tech Market

Drake Star also released a market map…

Having created many of these myself — I can say competitive landscape slides are HARD.

This gives a good high-level overview but only focuses on mid-to-late-stage companies.

Stay tuned as I want to keep releasing deeper market maps in unique areas not everyone covers.

S&P 500 vs. Sports

The sports tech public market continued its strong performance with most of the segments outperforming the S&P index.

Keep in mind…

This is only comparing public sports companies to the S&P 500 (private markets can net even greater returns.)

Examples of public sports companies:

FuboTV, WWE, Manchester United, Peloton, Catapult, DraftKings, Genius Sports, etc.

With M&A set to sweep the space, I expect to see more sports public companies in the future.

Final Thoughts

Drake Star does a solid job so props to them for providing us with their report (btw…I’m happy to email you the PDF of their report just respond to this post).

If you look below…

You’ll see I track all of this stuff closely in real time. And not only companies raising money or being acquired, but also what athletes are investing in.

Exciting times in the sports world!

Podcast 🎙

Today’s guest is Andrew Steinwold - Managing Partner Sfermion.

Sfermion is a fund focused on accelerating the emergence of the metaverse by investing in companies creating the digital future.

You’ll enjoy this episode as we discuss:

• Applying sports to the metaverse

• Buying Bitcoin in 2013 to a $100M venture fund

• Key terms to know: AR, Web3, DAO, Token, VR, etc

Check out the podcast episode here.

𝘚𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘢𝘱, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦.

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🗞️ Weekly Roundup

🥇 Business of Athletes

• Udonis Haslem joined World Jai-Alai League (WJAL) as the owner of the Rebote Renegades.

• Golfer Brooks Koepka has joined Casa Azul Tequila as an investor and ambassador.

• Former NHL player Paul Holmgren created PBX Pickleball, a league for retired pro athletes.

🏟 College Sports/NIL

• Iowa State and We Will Collective launched a cobranded line of vodka.

• WWE SVP James Kimball launched NIL agency, Novo Sports Group.

💰 Sports Business

• The Saudis launched a new company, SRJ Sports Investments.

• ESPN and PENN Entertainment partnered in a ~$2B deal to create ESPN Bet.

• Matthew Berry's Fantasy Life raised $2M from several notable athletes.

• AI video startup, SportsVisio, has raised a $3M seed round.

• The Futures App, a baseball training and skill platform, raised $2M.

Congrats to Jason Syversen (SportsVisio) and Jake Hirabayashi (The Futures App) on the recent raises. Click their names to check out the podcasts I did with them.

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Thanks for reading today!

Have an awesome weekend.

Peace,

AP