The 4th Quarter: Alt Sports to the Moon & Latest In Sports Tech This Week, March 22nd
Meteoric Rise of Alternative Sports, JP Morgan’s Sports Division Debut, New Job Board
Skip To What You Want To Read ⬇️
I. The Rise of Alternative Sports & Why
II. Weekly Startup Spotlight: Pro League Network & National Cycling League (NCL)
III. Sports-Tech Market Activity: VC, M&A, Deals, Strategic Ventures
IV. Weekly Job Board: Sports, Media, Entertainment, Technology
The Tidal Wave of Alternative Sports:
Brief note from The 4th Quarter crew: after experimenting on open rates, we’ve decided to bring our weekly newsletter back to Fridays!
In the United States, the National Football League, National Basketball League, Major League Baseball, and National Hockey League are considered the “Big Four” of sports, dominating fan viewership with a combined 21.59M viewers per game. With brands wanting to tap into the largest reserve of eyeballs, the Big Four generated $47.18B in combined revenue this past year.
While these legacy leagues might have a tougher time penetrating into new audience bases, alternative sports leagues are meteorically rising in popularity, garnering new viewers, setting a new standard for what “sports” is, and creating a new stream of financial opportunities. Here are some that we find fascinating:
Drone Racing League - reached 260M in global streaming viewership in 2023 and trying to ‘sportify’ the $127B world-wide drone market
Major League Pickleball: Emerging league for the ~40M pickleball players nationwide; MLP Pro Teams are getting valued around $10M
World Surf League: Had 25M video-on-demand views in 2023, an increase of 58%; currently tapping into a $4B surfing market
League One Volleyball: Raised $25M in Series B funding ahead of its innovation-focused debut in 2024
3ICE - unique 3v3 ice hockey league which has raised $14.9M to capture the fan growth of the sport
Power Slap League: Under the Dana White & UFC umbrella, it touts a supposed 220K viewers per showing; according to experts, it is drastically underperforming expectations
While there are a few other rising alternative sports that are climbing the mountain of fandom, they’ve yet to prove a repeatable business model. We’ll just have to wait and see if any of these have what it takes to rival the Big Four.
Weekly Startup Spotlight:
Tired of the same old big 4 sports: Football, Basketball, Baseball, and Hockey? Here are a few companies that are obliterating the status quo & aiming to become your favorite sports to watch:
Pro League Network - The new era of sports broadcasts might be slightly different than what you think: Alternative sports + 24/7 bettable content. Owning the IP of 13+ alternative sports brands such as Kevin Garnett’s 3v3 basketball league STR33T, CarJitsu, World Putting League, Slap Fight and more, Pro League Network is on a mission to acquire and create a domestic sports-betting content hub of the most exciting alternative sports. With 20M+ social impressions & 500K followers, this founding team is igniting a new empire at the intersection of alt sports and the betting-frenzy. Founders Bill & Mike are seasoned gaming executives with experience as the CMO of Everest Poker and as a McKinsey Partner in sports & gaming, respectively.
Founders: Bill Yucatonis, Mike Salvaris
Funding: Raised $2M+ from Eberg Capital, and participation from notable angel investors such as Kevin Garnett, Chris Groove, and more
National Cycling League - Were you a speed demon back in your glory days of biking around your neighborhood? There’s now a professional sports league built specifically for competitive bicycle racing. The NCL is a tech-enabled league that is tapping into the community of 50M U.S. cyclists that spend ~$13B on their bikes annually. In addition to the $1M prize pool, the NCL is the first ever gender equal professional sport where men and women compete on the same team and contribute equally to the scoreboard. It’s also the first ever majority-minority and female owned professional sports league!
Founders: David Mulugheta, Paris Wallace, Randall Clark
Funding: Raised $7.5M in Seed funding led by Will Ventures, and participation from a star-studded lineup such as the CEO of DraftKings Jason Robins, NBA Stars Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant, NFL Star Jalen Ramsey, Former Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay, among others
Sports-Tech Market Activity: Investors & Deals
Venture Capital
Mallard Bay, an online booking platform for users searching for exciting hunting & fishing trips, raised $4.6M in Series A funding (Mar. 20th)
Investment was led by Soul Venture Partners; other investors include Acadian Capital Ventures, Softeq Venture Studio, Callais Capital, and more [FinSMEs]
Winible, a sports-betting marketplace that allows users to set/sell their own betting pools, raised $6M in seed funding (Mar. 19th)
Congrats to one of our previous Startup Spotlights for raising a seed round!
Investment was led by Inspired Capital; other investors include PrizePicks founder Adam Wexler, Splash Inc., Ray Lewis, and others [SBJ]
Basketball Forever, an Australian-based fantasy sports, media, and betting platform for basketball raised $4M in Series A funding (Mar. 20th)
Expanding its offerings into the North American sports betting market
Investment was led by Yolo Investments; other investors include Andover Ventures, Astralis Capital Management, and angel investors [SBJ]
Edge Sound Research, an NBA Launchpad alum that uses audio-management software to improve in-stadium audio experience for fans, raised $1.9M in seed funding (Mar. 20th)
Investment was led by previous investor Potential Capital; other investors include elevate Ventures, Techstars, and NBA Equity [SBJ]
WavMaker, a music licensing platform that helps video creators acquire high-quality music for their content, raised $5M in seed funding (Mar. 20th)
Expanding staff and improving customer acquisition capabilities
Investment was led by Vicky Patel, co-founder of Monarch Media, a film/TV production company based in LA [FinSMEs]
Cathedral Studios, an indie game studio known for its FPS & horror-driven video game The Bornless, raised $6.66M in Seed funding (Mar. 19th)
King River Capital, Polygon Labs, and Immutable are partnering together to launch Inevitable Games Fund (IGF) with a final fund size of $100M (Mar. 21st)
IGF will invest in high-growth opportunities in the web3 gaming space, leveraging both Immutable and Polygon Lab’s web3 expertise with King River Capital’s investment processes [VCWire]
Ultrahuman, a fitness-tech wearables company, raised $35M in Series B funding, both in equity and debt (Mar. 20th)
Further scaling their manufacturing capacity for their products and advancing research in health tracking
Investors include Blume Ventures, Steadview Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, and Alpha Wave [Entrackr]
M&A and Investments
Dyal Capital replaces Carlyle as the associated financial sponsor for Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore to take a $1.5B majority stake in the Minnesota Timberwolves & Lynx (Mar. 21st)
Acquisition is set to close by the end of March [SBJ]
Enlightened Hospitality acquires a $20M-valued minority stake in Five Iron Golf, an indoor golf venue operator famous for its integrated golf simulators (Mar. 12th)
Open a new & expansive flagship location in New York’s Grand Central Station [GN Wire]
Saudi’s Public Investment Fund offered $2B to acquire/merge the ATP & WTA tours (Mar. 13th)
Creation of a new Master 1000 tournament hosted in Saudi Arabia and a new ‘PIF Tour’ with equal prize money for female tennis players [SportsPro Media]
CREATD, a holding company for tech and media assets, will acquire Tami Ventures, a portfolio company specialized in tech/ads/media for $23M (Mar. 11th)
Capitalizing on synergies by launching a product in the sports betting space and an innovative gaming social media platform [VC Wire]
Virtuous, a Singaporean gaming development company, acquired Beyond-FX, a visual effects studio based in LA (Mar. 15th)
Expanding Virtuous’ gaming offerings globally by leverage Beyond-FX’s global reach [FinSMEs]
Photo: Lebron James & JJ Redick launch their new podcast “Mind the Game”
Strategic Ventures
JPMorgan launches its own sports-focused investment banking group, advising on acquisitions and financing solutions for sports-related companies (Mar. 20th)
Previously advised on Jim Ratcliffe’s minority stake acquisition of Manchester United, Formula One Owner Liberty Media, and the WWE [SportsPro Media]
Lebron and JJ Redick launch “Mind the Game”, a basketball focused podcast, produced by their respective companies Uninterrupted & ThreeFourTwo Productions (Mar. 19th)
Intended to astutely break down the game of basketball while straying from subjective conversations popular in sports talk-shows [SBJ]
Simplebet, a micro-betting tech provider, is launching a game tracker interface on two of the biggest sportsbook platforms: Betr & DraftKings (Mar. 19th)
Displays live stats and in-depth shot visualizations synchronized to micro-betting props that users can wager [SBJ]
NBA League Pass partners with Sportradar to integrate betting functionality through its streaming platform (Mar. 19th)
Betting content such as over-unders, spreads, money lines, etc. will be integrated into the streaming content, updating in tandem with the game [Sportradar]
Minute Media strikes a deal with Authentic Brands Group to be the new company that publishes the Sports Illustrated magazine (Mar. 18th)
Deal will last 10-years with an option to extend to 30
Authentic Brands Group will take a minority stake in Minute Media through this partnership [SBJ]
Formula E enters a multiyear partnership with Google Cloud to analyze both business and auto-tech data (Mar. 15th)
Leveraging Goog Cloud’s cloud infrastructure to analyze fan behavior and improve engagement and deploy Generative AI for its GenBeta Race Car Development [SBJ]
Job Board & Opportunities: Week March 22nd
Every week, the job board is personally curated for openings that are not widely posted. Spanning business development to software engineering and everything in between - entry level jobs to senior leadership - here’s to those looking for new opportunities in 2024:
1. Premier Lacrosse League: Product Management Intern: $17/hr
2. BSE Global (Brooklyn Nets) - Information Technology Summer Intern: $18/hr
3. Los Angeles Lakers - Business Strategy & Insights Analyst: 1-3 Years of Experience / $70K
4. PrizePicks - Social Strategy Project Manager: ~2 Years of Experience
5. League One Volleyball - Finance & Strategy Analyst: ~ 3 Years of Experience / $85K
6. Basket Entertainment - Head of Operations: Open To All Levels
7. Niantic - Data Scientist, Pokémon Go: $176K + Bonus + Equity
8. WSC Sports - Business Development Manager: ~4 Years of Experience / $140K
9. Paramount+ & CBS Sports - Director of Product Management: $200K
10. Amazon (AWS) - Business Operations Lead, Sports, Media, Games: $199K