Six Nations Rugby will introduce Sportable’s smart rugby ball into its competitions as part of a multi-year partnership, beginning with the Autumn Nations Series that starts on October 29 with a match between Australia and Scotland.
Sportable and ball manufacturer Gilbert have collaborated to develop a chip-enabled rugby ball that tracks such metrics as passing and kicking distances, speeds and hang time, as well as the prospect of officiating support. That data is then analyzed and made available to broadcasters, sportsbooks and the participating teams with less than 400 milliseconds latency thanks to partnerships with Vodafone and AWS Wavelength edge computing.
Six Nations trialed the Sportable ball during its women’s tournament in 2021 and now will implement it in the Autumn Nations Series between Northern and Southern Hemisphere teams, Guinness Six Nations men’s tournament and TikTok Women’s Six Nations Championship.
In a separate deal, Six Nations Rugby has also named software provider Sage as its official insights partner. Sage, which also recently partnered with Major League Baseball, will be integrated across all Six Nations competitions with part of its rugby remit to help analyze the new smart ball data.
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.
The Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty helped open a new technology hub in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for Digital Girl, an NYC nonprofit focused on supporting inner-city girls to pursue careers in STEM. The teams and their jersey sponsor Webull partnered to donate $250,000 to build the space, which will offer free classes and certificates on topics such as web design, robotics, data analysis and computer science.
Desktop Macs, PC computers, and a 3D printer are among the free resources in the technology hub, which will offer courses for local children, adults, and seniors. Nets guard Joe Harris and Liberty forward Michaela Onyenwere joined local students on Monday at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new space, which saw volunteer employees from both teams paint a mural outside the technology hub in Crown Heights.
Digital Girl has taught computer science subjects to more than 9,000 New Yorkers since Michelle Gall founded the nonprofit in 2014 to increase the number of women and people of color in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) professions. Other initiatives aimed at diversifying STEM fields include Serena Williams’s investment made in April in job interviewing platform Karat with the goal to hire 100,000 Black software engineers.
Soldier Field, home to the NFL’s Chicago Bears and the Chicago Fire of MLS, has installed a new cloud-based parking management system in partnership with parking technology company Amano McGann. The stadium now has 20 parking lanes equipped with Amano One touchscreen hardware units for fans to make parking payments with their credit cards.
Amano additionally provides cloud-based software for venue operators to view real-time data on the number of parking spots available and occupied, as well as categorizing those spots by parking type such as temporary, employee, or long-term. The Miami Marlins implemented a similar parking management software with Genetec this past MLB season.
The Bears have played at Soldier Field since 1971 and have a lease to remain at the stadium through 2033, but they can leave as soon as 2026 by paying an $84 million penalty. The Bears have been talking with local government officials about eventually relocating to a stadium in Arlington Heights, a suburb about 25 miles northwest of downtown Chicago.
Bleacher Report will produce alternative late-inning streams of Games 1 and 4 of the upcoming American League Championship Series that will allow fans to live-chat with broadcasters during the game’s tense moments. Game 1 of the ALCS between the New York Yankees and Houston Astros is slated for this Wednesday, with Game 4 scheduled for Sunday.
Available through the B/R app, the exclusive seventh, eighth and ninth inning streams will feature Emmy-Award winning announcer Jaime Maggio, former MLB outfielder Dexter Fowler, Los Angeles Dodgers host Kirsten Watson and current Arizona Diamondbacks ace Zac Gallen. B/R is utilizing the regular TBS game-feed via TV Everywhere authentication to enable the interaction between fans and on-air talent.
B/R claims it will keep the streams rolling during commercial breaks, when Maggio, Fowler and Gallen will react to MLB-related tweets and viewer comments within the app. B/R has produced similar alternative streams for the NBA and NHL as it explores real-time interactive broadcasting. A subsidiary of Turner Sports, B/R previously unveiled fourth-quarter NBA livestreams featuring basketball YouTuber Kenny Beecham and also first-period NHL streams with hockey YouTuber Andrew Telfer (known as Nasher).
The Bleacher Report app has been heading in this innovative direction since 2019, when Turner Sports made plans to merge its B/R Live OTT streaming platform into its regular B/R app. The media company also launched direct messaging within its mobile app at that time to enhance communication between its users, which is now coming to the forefront during this month’s ALCS.
