The 4th Quarter: Latest In Sports Tech This Week, April 19th

Wellness-tech & Anti-Aging Bio-hacks, Sports Analytics Sees Funding, New Job Board

Sid Balaga & Suraj Peramanu

Apr 20, 2024

Skip To What You Want To Read ⬇️

I. Health & Wellness-Tech: Slow Your Aging

II. Weekly Startup Spotlight: Ancient Ritual Company & Gainful

III. Sports-Tech Market Activity: IPOs, VC, M&A, Deals, Strategic Ventures, Fundraising

IV. Weekly Job Board: Sports, Media, Entertainment, Technology

Health & Wellness-Tech: Slow Your Aging

In addition to our weekly coverings in startups & venture capital on all things sports, media, entertainment, and gaming - we often overlook one booming vertical: health & wellness-tech. In the past few months, a new ‘biohacking’ trend has emerged to optimize human health, diet, and exercise to increase longevity. Most popularly, billionaire Brian Johnson has exploded on social media with his $2M/year anti-aging routine known as “Project Blueprint.” Billionaire and UFC President Dana White has recently endorsed Gary Brecka, a human biologist & bio hacker who has been helping many social media influencers with preventative health care. In contrast to the hundreds of vitamin pills, optimized eating windows, blood transfusions, red light therapy, and numerous other procedures, it’s believed that basic infrared heat therapy and cold-plunge exposure are the easiest & cheapest ways for people to bio-hack. Here are a few data points that might convince you to hop in the sauna or ice-bath:

In the last year, saunas have become the hottest wellness trend in the last 2,000 years of existence.
A large European study showed that men who attended a sauna session 2-3x per week reduced their cardiovascular mortality rate by ~30%, and 4+ times a week equated to ~50% reduction in risk.
Heat exposure for ~10 min between 150 F & 195 F have been linked with improved heart health, faster muscle recovery, increased protein synthesis, elongated sleep, and increased immunity
Cold (water) exposure has been recorded to spike natural dopamine levels by 250%+, increase metabolism, regulate blood sugar, increase in white blood cell production, and more.

Are these enough reasons to get you to start biohacking? If so, below are a few startups that might interest you.

Weekly Startup Spotlight

With billionaires bringing biohacking & health optimization routines to the spotlight, here are some health-tech companies you can check out to start your journey:

Ancient Ritual Company (Arc) - Capitalizing on the resurgence of the sauna recovery health trend, Arc has created an innovative sauna product to address the 181M American frequent goers. After previously selling BloomThat, this UC Boulder alumni founder duo is innovating in the sauna & spa market valued at $126.6B (which is expected to hit $182B by 2028.) Only able to secure an Arc Sauna through an invite-only reservation, the company is creating the world’s first experiential sauna experience that includes science-based treatments across heat, light, color, sound, and mindfulness programming. With a valuation exceeding $25M+, Arc is set to begin shipping out their product in summer 2024 at $9.9K-$12.5K. If you’re serious about hopping on the biohacking wave, this might just be worth the investment.
- Founders: David Bladow, Matthew Schwab
- Funding: Raised $5.8M in a Seed round in 2022 from Saltwater Capital, Seven Seven Six, Offline Ventures, and other prominent investors

Gainful - By now, we’ve heard that protein intake is good for muscle recovery in addition to the myriad of other bio-benefits it provides. However, all of the protein powder on the market has a standardized ingredient formula that takes a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Until Gainful was introduced in Y Combinator’s Winter 2018 batch; it’s a personalized nutrition company that creates incredibly clean formulas & vitamin stacks. By taking a quiz, a plethora of hyper-personalized supplements are customized to fit your unique body, lifestyle, and goals. It’s designed for you, and driven by science.
- Founder: Eric Wu, Brian Devlin, Jahaan Ansari
- Funding: Raised $7.5M Series A in 2021 led by BrandProject & Courtside Ventures, and participation from AF Ventures, Round13 Capital, Barrel Ventures, and the founder of Polaris Sports. It was also a part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2018 batch. In 2023, talks of raising another ~$30M to finance the company.

Sports-Tech Market Activity: Investors & Deals

Venture Capital

Gemini Sports Analytics, a data-analytics company specialized in sports, raised an additional $3.1M in most recent VC round (April 17th)
- Investment was led by Will Ventures [Sports Pro Media]
Cellula, a game developer with a focus on on-chain AI simulation games, raised $2M in pre-seed funding (April 15th)
- Investment was led by SevenX Ventures and OKX Ventures; other investors include Mask Network and Foresight Ventures [FinSMEs]
Avalon, an independent game studio, raised $10M in a VC round (April 15th)
- Developing their debut title, a multiplayer online game with interoperable worlds for both web2 & web3 gamers
- Investment was led by Bitkraft Ventures and Hashed; other investors include Coinbase, Spartan Capital, Foresight Ventures, and more [FinSMEs]
The National Thoroughbred League, a horse racing company/league, raised an undisclosed amount (April 17th)
- Positioning itself as a potential leader in the thoroughbred racing space
- Investment was led by DCB Sports [FinSMEs]

M&A and Investments

Bowflex, a recently bankrupt fitness equipment brand, was sold to Johnson Health Tech Retail for $37.5M (April 16th)
- Bowflex suffered tremendously post-pandemic, experiencing mass layoffs, a complete rebranding, and delisting from NYSE [Athletetech]
Ninja Kiwi, a game studio known for its free online PC games, acquired AutoAttack Games to expand the company’s offerings of tower defense games (April 16th)
- AutoAttack drew most of its success from Legion TD 2 [FinSMEs]
Svexa, an athlete intelligence platform, acquired Zone7, a sports-tech AI startup specialized in improving human performance (April 12th)
- Will combine Svexa’s analytics with Zone7’s injury risk forecasting to create an end-to-end AI platform that will have sports, wellness, and even military applications
- New product can help with athlete development, injury risk mitigation, load management, and more [StartupHub]
777 Partners proposed takeover of Premier League Football club Everton has been delayed due to difficulties in raising funds (April 16th)
- The private investment firm was granted an extension to repay a £160m loan, a condition that must be reached before the acquisition can be made
- Process has been drawn out for longer than 7 months [theGuardian]
Private equity firm Birch Hill Equity Partners is placing CCM, a famous hockey equipment manufacturer, up for sale (April 17th)
- Birch Hill acquired the company in 2017, more than doubled revenue and boosted profits to more than $75M per year [CityNews]
Unrivaled Sports, a youth sports company & owner of top-tier sports facilities, acquired Diamond Nation, owner of a premier baseball & softball facility in New Jersey (April 15th)
- Will be the company’s first expansion into youth baseball and softball facilities [PR Newswire]

Photo: Private equity firm 777 Partners’ acquisition of Everton continues delay due to debt financing issues.

Strategic Ventures

Greenfly, a short-form content automation platform, signed a multi-year deal with the NBA to manage & facilitate the league’s content workflows (April 16th)
- The partnership enables real-time content captured by the league’s digital producers to seamlessly flow into the NBA App [Greenfly]
Chicago sports teams White Sox, Bulls, and Blackhawks are nearing a deal with sports network Stadium as their contract with NBC Sports Chicago expires (April 15th)
- Allows Stadium to convert into a regional sports network in the Midwest [Chicago Sun Times]
Just Women’s Sports (JWS), a leading multimedia platform for women’s sports, is partnering with the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) for third consecutive year as the official media partner (April 17th)
- JWS has been incredibly valuable for NWSL, driving millions of social impressions and providing a 10% engagement rate [Yahoo Finance]
Amazon Music is testing out an AI playlist generator Maestro to compete with Spotify (April 16th)
- Maestro can generate playlists matching the user’s input through either spoken or written prompts [TC]

Fundraising

Nico Rosberg, former F1 world champion, launched Rosberg Ventures, a €75 million fund of funds (April 17th)
- Focused on investing in tech-focused VC firms such as a16z, Kleiner Perkins, Accel, etc. [VCWire]

IPOs

StubHub, a leading online ticketing service, is planning an IPO by late summer of this year (April 12th)
- The company is hoping to achieve a valuation of $16.5B, which was the last private funding round valuation in late 2021 [Seeking Alpha]