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Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Los Angeles Lakers legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson has just bought two new sports franchises—in the metaverse.
Johnson is investing in Beverly Hills-based SimWin Sports, a digital sports league where virtual teams and athletes backed by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) compete in simulated games. In addition to taking an ownership stake in the startup, Johnson has acquired a yet-to-be named basketball team and football franchise called the Los Angeles Magic. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2019, SimWin Sports is among a crop of startups merging fantasy sports with blockchain technology. The league’s NFT teams are owned by well-known athletes and celebrities, from Hall of Fame NFL wide receiver Jerry Rice to former Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter. SimWin fans, meanwhile, can buy, sell and trade NFTs representing fictional players who can be drafted by the league’s team owners. Those NFT holders can potentially earn money, too, when team owners like Johnson pay their players salaries and performance bonuses.
“This multibillion-dollar business is about to take off and the SimWin model is an excellent way for sports fans to get involved in this groundbreaking opportunity,” Johnson, who will also serve as an advisor to SimWin, said in a statement.
SimWin’s virtual sports contests are largely games of chance. Team owners can pre-set their game strategies and rosters, while player NFT holders may “train” their players to improve their attributes—but player performance itself is simulated through what SimWin calls an “innovative AI performance model.” The digital athletes, in turn, develop over the course of their careers and can go through hot and cold streaks, much like real athletes.
“From a fantasy perspective, for all those people who wanted to own a team—whoever wanted to be a player, manager or player agent—they'll have an opportunity to do that,” Andre Johnson, SimWin’s executive vice president of business development, told dot.LA. (Andre Johnson, a former gaming executive at Sherman Oaks-based Mythical Games and L.A.-based Virtual Reality Company, is Magic Johnson’s son).
The company has sold “dozens” of teams so far, including some for a seven-figure price, Andre Johnson said, while NFTs for players are expected to run between $300 to $600 for fans to purchase. SimWin also plans to generate revenue through merchandise and TV distribution deals, and aims to integrate sports betting through licensing deals with third-party sportsbooks, he added.
The 22-person startup expects to launch its first virtual football season by late summer or early fall, according to Andre Johnson. SimWin has raised $13.25 million in funding to date, according to PitchBook Data, from investors including 1UP Ventures, Animoca Brands, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Bron Studios, Kingsway Capital and YOLO Investment. The firm’s CEO is David Ortiz, a former senior producer on EA Sports’ popular Madden football video game franchise who’s also worked at the gaming studios of Sony and Microsoft.
Other companies are attempting NFT-based sports leagues of their own, including Hermosa Beach-based Fan Controlled Football, which lets crypto owners call the plays in real-life games. Andre Johnson called sports the “biggest form of entertainment,” but noted that most American pro sports leagues only run for a few months each year. SimWin—which says it will run games 24 hours a day, every day—is betting that die-hard fans will engage all year long with its more than 5,000 contests annually.
“We want everything that you would see from a traditional sports franchise,” Andre Johnson said. “All the ways you can generate money, all the things you can do, we're just doing it from a digital perspective.”
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
SpaceX has reportedly fired several employees who were involved in writing and circulating an open letter that criticized CEO Elon Musk.
The firings were first reported Thursday by the New York Times, which noted that SpaceX employees began sharing the letter—which labeled Musk’s public behavior and social media activity as “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment”—on Wednesday. Reuters subsequently reported that at least five SpaceX employees had been fired, though the exact number remains unclear. SpaceX did not return dot.LA’s request for comment.
The open letter was shared in an internal Microsoft Teams channel featuring more than 2,600 SpaceX employees, according to The Verge. The document called for the Hawthorne-based aerospace company to “publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior” and to “swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.” Musk is a contentious presence on Twitter, which he is currently in the midst of acquiring via a $44 billion takeover bid.
“As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX—every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company,” the open letter read. “It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.”
The letter also asked SpaceX to “hold all leadership equally accountable” for the company’s workplace culture and to “define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior”—adding that the company was failing to live up to its stated “no asshole” and “zero tolerance” policies.
In an email obtained by the Times, SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said the company had “terminated a number of employees involved” in the letter.
“The letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views,” Shotwell wrote. “We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism.”
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter at @Samsonamore. Pronouns: he/him
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
TikTok’s data on U.S. users was repeatedly accessed in China by employees of parent company ByteDance, according to a new report from BuzzFeed News that raises fresh privacy concerns about the Chinese-owned social media app.
The news outlet obtained audio recordings from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings, which revealed that engineers in China had access to U.S. data from September 2021 to at least January 2022. In some situations, U.S.-based TikTok workers had to rely on their Chinese colleagues to access American users’ data, BuzzFeed reported on Friday.
“Everything is seen in China,” a member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety department said in a September 2021 meeting, according to the report.
Culver City-based TikTok has faced scrutiny over its handling of U.S. user data due to concerns that information on Americans could fall into the hands of China’s government. Former President Donald Trump, whose administration took a particularly tough stance toward China, sought to force a sale of the hugely popular social media startup and even tried to ban TikTok from U.S. app stores.
“As we've publicly stated, we've brought in world-class internal and external security experts to help us strengthen our data security efforts,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to dot.LA. “This is standard industry practice given the complexity of data security challenges.”
The spokesperson added that TikTok recently created a new department with U.S.-based leadership “to provide a greater level of focus and governance” on U.S. data security. “The creation of this organization is part of our ongoing effort and commitment to strengthen our data protection policies and protocols, further protect our users, and build confidence in our systems and controls.”
In the wake of the Buzzfeed article on Friday, TikTok announced that it had migrated all of its U.S. user traffic to servers operated by American software giant Oracle, which has long been floated as a TikTok data partner that could help assuage U.S. security concerns.
“We still use our U.S. and Singapore data centers for backup, but as we continue our work we expect to delete U.S. users' private data from our own data centers and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the U.S.,” Albert Calamug of TikTok’s U.S. Security Public Policy team wrote in a blog post.
Calamug added that TikTok would work with Oracle to develop data management protocols in an attempt to “give users even more peace of mind.”
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Social media giant Snap is testing a paid subscription called Snapchat Plus that would give users access to exclusive features.
“We’re doing early internal testing of Snapchat Plus, a new subscription service for Snapchatters,” a Snap spokesperson told dot.LA in a statement. “We’re excited about the potential to share exclusive, experimental and pre-release features with our subscribers, and learn more about how we can best serve our community.”
Snap’s statement came after app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi shared screenshots and information on Twitter about Snap’s experiments with a paid tier. The screenshots show how Snapchat Plus could allow subscribers to pin a friend on the app as a “#1 BFF.” Other features could include the ability to see how many friends have rewatched a Snapchat Story and learn of a friend’s whereabouts in the last 24 hours (if that friend has chosen to share their location), according to Paluzzi.
One screenshot showed a listed subscription price for Snapchat Plus of 4.59 euros per month and 45.99 euros per year, or around $4.81 per month and $48.19 per year—though those price tags could just be placeholders. A Snap spokesperson declined to share how much Snapchat Plus would cost subscribers. (Disclosure: Snap is an investor in dot.LA.)
Snap would follow other social media giants—most notably, Twitter’s Twitter Blue product—in offering a subscription with exclusive features and perks for a monthly or annual price.
Adding a subscription tier would provide Snap with a new revenue stream as the company grapples with a challenging digital advertising market. Snap—which currently generates virtually all of its revenue from ads—warned investors last month that it’s expecting lower-than-expected revenues and profits this quarter. The company has blamed economic headwinds like inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the underwhelming results and is also still navigating Apple’s new privacy policy, which restricts how users are tracked on its mobile devices.
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
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