The iconic Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First” comedy sketch — which runs on a continuous loop at the Baseball Hall of Fame — is being commemorated with an NFT that will drop on the first day of this year’s World Series.
Produced by Power Up NFTs, each of the 8,791 digital collectibles will feature a still frame from the original “Who’s on First,” which first aired on the Kate Smith Radio Show in 1938 and has been called the best comedy skit of the 20th Century by Time Magazine.
The NFTS, to be released through WhosOnFirstNFT.com before Game 1 of the Fall Classic on October 28th, can be purchased by the general public via credit card. Through the company Unforgettable Licensing, the NFTs were signed off on by the estates of comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.
US Youth Soccer and Veo have agreed to a five-year partnership that will enable the proliferation of automated video capture.
Veo, which makes an AI-powered camera that specializes in soccer, will make its video exchange platform available to USYS’s Elite 64 and National League PRO, which will help with scouting opponents and recruiting players. The intention is for the Veo League Exchange to become accessible to other national leagues in the coming years.
As part of the agreement, USYS teams will receive a 20% discount off the $999 Veo Cam 2. More than 2.5 million youth compete in USYS leagues annually. USYS previously partnered with STATSports to make wearable GPS trackers available to Elite 64 players.
Denmark-headquartered Veo has a satellite office in Miami and works with several MLS clubs at either the first team or academy level and has attracted Carli Lloyd as a global ambassador and has been the title sponsors of Kevin De Bruyne’s annual youth tournament. Veo raised $80 million in Series C funding back in June.
Kinly, a financial app designed to promote financial empowerment and building generational wealth within the Black community, has entered the NIL space by signing the sons of Jackson State head football coach Deion Sanders.
Jackson State quarterback Shedeur Sanders and safety Shilo Sanders have joined North Carolina basketball standout Deja Kelly as brand ambassadors for Kinly, which has just launched an NIL campaign called “Prepare for Your Moment.”
Designed to create awareness for the Kinly app, the “Prepare for Your Moment” platform is intended to aid Black athletes in financial planning and education. Powered by Kinly’s director of financial education Dr. Melody Wright, the athletes will promote Wright’s insights on everyday spending and other ways to guide young athletes on personal finance.
The Sanders brothers, who have helped Jackson State remain undefeated at 6-0, are in high demand via NIL. This week alone, Shedeur signed a deal with Tom Brady’s apparel firm, Brady Brand, which was followed by both Shilo and Shedeur signing with the apparel company Actively Black.
Athlete marketplace Opendorse, known as a top NIL technology provider, as well as INFLCR, the NIL software and social media management platform, have both entered partnerships with U.S. Bank and MoneyLion, respectively to improve financial literacy for college athletes who are pursuing NIL.
Arcade game manufacturer Play Mechanix has won the NFL’s inaugural game developer challenge hosted with mobile gaming company Skillz. Play Mechanix’s new NFL-branded mobile game called NFL QB Shootout is now available on iOS and Android devices.
NFL QB Shootout was selected out of nearly 200 submissions for the game development challenge hosted by Skillz, which received investment from the NFL in 2019 and signed a multi-year partnership with the league last year. The new mobile app allows fans to act as quarterback of any of the 32 NFL teams and attempt to throw touchdowns before the game’s digital clock runs out to win real-world prizes. Skillz also has game development deals with the UFC and Drone Racing League.
Illinois-based Play Mechanix was founded in 1995 and is best known for its hunting arcade video game Big Buck Hunter. The company merged with fellow arcade game maker Raw Thrills in 2006 and its other popular titles include Minecraft Dungeons Arcade and MotoGP Arcade. NFL QB Shootout expands the league’s gaming portfolio that also includes the NFT-based NFL Rivals with Mythical Games, VR game NFL Pro Era with StatusPro, NFL Clash mobile with Nifty Games, EA’s Madden franchise, plus integrations within Roblox as well as Rocket League and Fortnite from Epic Games.
The Professional Fighters League and DAZN are launching a joint venture to create a regional MMA league overseas, to be called PFL Europe. Additionally, the two sides agreed to a multi-year rights deal that will make DAZN the exclusive broadcast partner for PFL global events in 53 international markets, primarily in Europe.
PFL Europe will highlight up-and-coming MMA fighters from the continent competing in Europe. PFL CEO Peter Murray described PFL Europe as “the beginning of the Champions League of MMA,” espousing his vision for several regional circuits that feature the same group stage and knockout round format as soccer’s UEFA Champions League. PFL founder and chairman Donn Davis has touted his league’s status as the only “meritocracy” in MMA.
DAZN is now a partner in the PFL PPV Super Fight Division, as well as the broadcaster in Europe for all PFL properties, which includes its Global League and Challenger Series as well as the PPV Super Fight Division and PFL Europe. Among the international markets where DAZN is now the exclusive carrier of PFL fights are the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain.
AI sports video company Pixellot is working with media company Team Whistle to produce “My First Coach,” a new digital series starring former NBA All-Star and current Charlotte Hornets broadcaster Dell Curry. He will focus on telling childhood stories about his sons, two-time NBA MVP Stephen Curry and Brooklyn Nets guard Seth Curry.
My First Coach will debut Oct. 28 and marks the first original content series for Magnet, Team Whistle’s social content agency. The series will air on Pixellot’s YouTube page and Whistle’s social channels that span 700 million followers. Sports streaming service DAZN acquired Team Whistle last month from Eleven Group. Pixellot’s AI-powered cameras and video analytics software VidSwap are widely used across youth and amateur sports, including the Jr. NBA, MLB Draft League, National Federation of High Schools, NBC’s SportsEngine, the America East Conference, and Cooperstown All Star Village.
“It is incredible to me, the difference having access to solutions like Pixellot’s Air camera and VidSwap, their analytics platform makes for a young athlete’s trajectory,” Dell Curry said in a statement. “I didn’t have the same resources at my disposal to capture my children’s important moments on film, and now this won’t happen again for the next generation of athletes.”
Israel-based Pixellot raised $161 million earlier this year and its professional sports partners include FC Barcelona and soccer clubs in the English Premier League, Liga MX, and Bundesliga, as well as the Israeli Basketball Association. As part of the new show collaboration, a Pixellot Air camera was given to Dell Curry who then chose to give it to Malcolm Sanders, a Charlotte-area youth basketball coach who was the first coach of Stephen and Seth.
Chyron, best known in sports for its optical tracking, has released a wearable system for horse racing intended to supply real-time data to broadcasters, betting companies and the horse trainers.
Its Tracab Horse Tracking System uses GPS or other satellite navigation technology along with RFID to deliver the horses’ positional data with less than 150 milliseconds latency. The horses wear devices weighing 100 grams (3.5 ounces), which relay positional data to base stations placed around the track and are then sent to the cloud for processing. Data from inertial measurement units (IMU), such as accelerometer and gyroscopes, will soon be incorporated as well to provide additional insights on accelerations and decelerations and gallop analysis like step counts and cadence.
Chyron, which rebranded from the name ChyronHego last year, makes a FIFA-certified optical tracking system that is widely used in global soccer and that previously supplied player positional data in the first iteration of MLB’s Statcast. For a few years, Chyron has offered a portable wearable system, Tracab Go, for athletes and teams when installing a camera system isn’t practical.
The NBA has launched an official account on BeReal, becoming the first major U.S. sports league to establish a presence on the emerging social media app that’s reached 53 million worldwide downloads according to research from SensorTower. The NBA joined the platform in September and made its first post during the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Ceremony.
BeReal is a photo-only platform founded in 2020 but skyrocketed in popularity earlier this year. Users receive a daily notification at a random part of the day alerting them that they have two minutes to post a photo of themselves and their surroundings — intended to nurture more authentic content than what’s often shared on other social media platforms like Instagram. Draymond Green, Chris Paul, Devin Booker, Jonathan Kuminga and former NBA star Manu Ginobili are among the players to thus far appear in photos shared by the NBA on BeReal.
“There is a young demographic on the platform and it is appointment viewing. The app is attracting users who are looking for a more authentic social media presence and are highly engaged with the content,” Ashley Atwell, the NBA’s senior director of social content, wrote in an email to SportTechie.
BeReal recently reached a pre-money valuation of $600 million, according to The Information, and its investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and DST Global. The app is “disrupting” the NBA’s social media strategy as both Instagram and TikTok recently added similar features that prompt users to share content within short windows.
“It is a completely unique platform that only allows you to post once per day. That posting time is dedicated by BeReal’s push notification and only your friends can see the content,” Atwell wrote. “We have seen platforms like Instagram and Snapchat replicate the camera functionality and most recently TikTok developed TikTok Now, which features similar capabilities. The authentic-nature and appointment viewing of BeReal is unique and has disrupted social media strategy.”
Rough Diamonds, the digital collectible platform mostly devoted to Brazilian soccer stars, is producing jersey NFTs in concert with the soccer-centric media conglomerate OneFootball.
The NFTs are available starting today through OneFootball’s proprietary marketplace Aera, which is the official partner of Serie A and promotes a bevy of Italian-based players and clubs. The collectibles, which include 200 digitally-replicated jerseys, can be obtained by fans with a digital wallet through the Rough Diamonds website.
Fans who obtain an NFT jersey and also buy a pack of “moments” from OneFootball will have a further opportunity to win an autographed shirt from an Italian Serie A Club. OneFootball’s presence has grown internationally after raising $300 million in Series D funding last April, led by Liberty City Ventures. Based in Berlin, the company produced more than 15,000 livestreams and on-demand content clips on its app last year.
EA Sports pledged its commitment to women’s soccer through a slew of announcements at its Women’s Football Summit, led by investing $11 million to launch the Starting XI Fund, a new accelerant dedicated to the women’s game.
The Starting XI Fund will target wide-ranging opportunities to support women’s leagues, clubs, athletes and in-game experiences. Additionally, EA Sports is beginning a women’s soccer internship program.
EA Sports is also beginning multi-year partnerships with the UEFA Women’s Champions League and its global broadcast partner, DAZN. The knockout stage of UWCL will be added to the FIFA 23 video game, and EA Sports teamed with DAZN to become the global broadcast partner of the UWCL. EA Sports will be become part of DAZN’s match coverage and its YouTube channel.
Previously, EA Sports featured Chelsea striker Sam Kerr on the FIFA 23 cover, the first woman to be so included, and deployed its XSens-powered Hypermotion2 technology on a women’s match for accurate motion capture data that will enable more realistic gameplay.
Soccer icon Lionel Messi has launched a stage agnostic holding company that is looking to invest in sports technology worldwide.
Messi’s company, known as Play Time Sports-Tech HoldCo LLC, has already poured money into two soccer-centric startups: the upcoming interactive website Matchday.com and market app AC Momento. According to Bloomberg, Messi’s apparent mission at Play Time is to fund soccer technology firms or invest in teams.
Based in San Francisco, the company will be led by Razmig Hovaghimian, a partner at the venture capital firm Graph Ventures and co-founder of Matchday.com, which is expected to launch just prior to the FIFA World Cup in November. Hovaghimian has also enlisted Michael Marquez — the founding partner of investment bank Code Advisors LLC — as a special advisor.
This past March, Messi also became a global ambassador for the fan token company Socios in a deal that paid him $20 million over three years, according to Reuters. Messi’s social media presence, which includes 400 million followers, has made him a desirable business partner.
