The 4th Quarter: Latest In Sports Tech This Week, March 1st, 2025

Overtime & ATP’s Content Partnership, Dana White’s New Boxing League, New Job Board

Mar 01, 2025

Overtime’s Golden B2B Content Opportunity:

Overtime struck a deal with ATP Tour to reach younger audiences by creating hyper-engaging content that will be distributed across socials.

What may seem like just another cool partnership announcement on the surface is actually an extremely strategic move from Overtime to extend its social media dominance into new leagues. With this one-of-a-kind deal, Overtime will leverage its existing 100M+ follower grip on Gen Z sports fans to make tennis cool (again?). Here’s why we think this is special:

Tennis’s Fandom Dilemma:

No, tennis isn’t broken. It’s still the fourth most-followed sport with 1B fans. But OT’s synergy with ATP has the potential to address key challenges:

An Aging Fanbase: The sport faces a well-documented challenge in attracting young viewers. The average age of pro tennis fans is 61 years old.
- Only 14% of adults 18-34 describe themselves as “avid” tennis fans.
- Simply put, Millennials and Gen Z are underrepresented in tennis viewership.

Lack of Storylines: The retirement or absence of megastars (Federer, Nadal, Serena & Venus Williams) has a pronounced impact on youth interest.
- The absence of Serena Williams & Roger Federer left a void in 2023 Grand Slams and contributed to lower TV ratings.
- Tennis is in a transition period without household names, but has emerging heroes like Coco Gauff, Carlos Alcaraz, Ben Shelton, and more.

Overtime x ATP’s Partnership as a Pivot Point:

Announced just days ago, the deal marks a shift from Overtime’s traditional self-generated IP to collabs with established leagues. With 81-83% of its audience under 35, the company has mastered how Gen Z consumes sports: relentless short-form & snackable content, funny clips & memes, and behind-the-scenes moments to show ‘how the magic is made.’

Cracking The Algorithm:

Overtime will provide “unprecedented, behind-the-scenes” content:
- Off-court player moments - showcasing players’ off-court antics & personalities
- Locker room & pre-match vibes - offering raw, unfiltered content
- Tennis-specific creators & OT Talent - Engaging niche audiences
- Collabs with ATP players - distributing content across ATP & Athlete channels
This new type of content will solve tennis’s issue:
- Bring in younger eyes to consume the sports on social media ✅
- Deepens fan connections by amplifying player personalities ✅

Future Dominance Through Partnerships:

This pivot could redefine Overtime’s market position. Owning & distributing its own leagues gave the company control, but limited in scale. Now, partnering with giants like ATP allows Overtime to tap into existing fan bases while injecting their own Gen Z flavor.

If successful, this could spark a domino effect. Other leagues desperate to connect with younger audiences may look to Overtime as a key distribution partner — expanding its revenue, influence, and reach.

Sports-Tech Market Activity: Investors & Deals

Accelerators

Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech accelerator unveils the 10 startups selected for fifth cohort (Feb. 25th)
- Among some we’ve previously featured in our newsletter:
  - Camb.AI: speech synthesis and translation
  - Orreco.AI: bio-analytics sport performance
  - LiveLike: audience engagement monetization [Comcast]
Paris Saint-Germain unveils accelerator, PSG Labs, to invest in sports tech, fan engagement, and performance solutions (Feb. 25th)
- Targeting both local and international startups; opening first international lab in Doha, Qatar to foster Middle East growth (Apply Here) [OneFootball]

New Funds

One Eight Capital, an early-stage healthcare VC firm launches $100M fund for athlete wellness and preventative healthcare (Feb. 26th)
- VC fund aims to close $100M by year-end, securing $50M
- Deployed $5M across Nucleus Genomics, Sollis Health, and VitalSpark AI
- Focusing on companies in genomics, athlete recovery, and consumer health tech [Sportico]
Meta commits $50M ‘Horizon Creator Fund’ to reward creators innovating in mobile and mixed reality within Meta Horizon Worlds (Feb. 20th)
- Expanding ‘Meta Horizon Creator Program’ (MHCP) to more countries including Australia, France, Germany, and Italy among others
- Announces a $1M mobile creator competition, ‘Mobile Genre Showdown’, starting March 11 [Meta]

Venture Capital

TitletownTech, a Wisconsin-based VC investing in emerging tech, launches $1M startup competition at Lambeau Field (Feb. 20th)
- Winner, to receive a $1M investment and $350K in Microsoft Azure credits
- Open to U.S. and Canadian startups in emerging tech fields across sports, manufacturing, supply chain, and agriculture among others [SBJ]
Onvy, a healthtech app that focuses on hyper-personalized precision health raised over $2M in Seed funding (Feb. 26th)
- Driving B2B expansion, targeting corporate wellness and competitive sports
- Investment led by Voloridge Health [ONVY]
Acid Labs, a gaming studio that develops social games via chat super apps raised $8M in funding (Feb. 24th)
- Expanding instant-play Web3 games on social messaging platforms
- Boinkers.io, its flagship game, boasts 11.5M monthly players on Telegram
- Investment led by A16z Speedrun and NFX; other investors include Fusion VC among other gaming executives [VentureBeat]

SponsWatch, a sponsorship analytics platform measuring exposure over various mediums for teams, leagues, and federations raised €1M in Seed funding (Feb. 26th)
- Targeting growth in the Nordics, followed by Europe, and eventual US market
- Clients include Swedish football and hockey clubs, and national federations among others
- Investment led by Node.vc; other investors include Venrex [EU Startups]

M&A and Investments

TKO, Saudi Arabia reportedly finalizing agreement for Dana White-Led boxing league (Feb. 27th)
- TKO to receive a $10M+ fee, but will not invest capital into the venture
- League to be led by UFC’s Dana White and WWE’s Nick Khan, with parent co. TKO, managing promotion and operations [Sportskeeda]
President Trump leads White House talks to push for PGA-LIV Golf merger (Feb. 21st)
- Trump met with LIV’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan and PGA’s Jay Monahan in a second round of discussions this month
- Initial PGA-LIV merger deal, announced in June 2023, stalled, with negotiations missing Dec. 31st deadline [Insider Sport]
RedBird Capital, a US-based PE firm reportedly exploring sale of IPL ‘Rajasthan Royals’ stake (Feb. 25th)
- 15% stake in which it originally paid $37.5M for (2021), at a $250M valuation
- Now looking to ‘double’ its investment amid rising IPL franchise valuations
- Following CVC Capital’s recent sale of a 67% stake in ‘Gujarat Titans’ for $575M (Feb. 2025) [SportsPro]

WeWard, a gamified app incentivizing users to walk to redeem rewards, secures tennis icon Venus Williams as investor & ambassador (Feb. 26th)
- App boasts 20M+ users, increasing daily walking activity by nearly 25%
- Recently expanded into 20 new countries, surpassing 1M downloads in the U.S. [Athletech]

Fastbreak.ai, an automated sports scheduling platform acquires combinatorial optimization tech, Barcelogic, to expand ‘Fastbreak Pro’ (Feb. 26th)
- Marking Fastbreak’s fourth acquisition since August 2024
- Now serving 55 league clients, including FIFA, La Liga, and LigaMX
- FastBreak has raised a total of $13.2M, including an $8M round in July 2024 [SBJ]

Bayern Munich star Harry Kane joins Tiger Woods’ TGL team as investor (Feb. 26th)
- Joining Tiger Woods’ ‘Jupiter Links GC’ as a limited partner
- Joining lineup of investors, including Justin Timberlake, MLB’s Mike Trout, and sports executive David Blitzer [GOAL]

Photo Creds: Sportskeeda

Strategic Ventures

ATP teams up with sports media company, Overtime, to engage Gen Z/Gen Alpha sports fans through BTS tennis content (Feb. 26th)
- Overtime tennis platforms to feature ATP stars and popular digital creators
- Overtime to produce content at ATP Masters 1000 events, Nitto ATP Finals, and Next Gen ATP Finals [ATP]
Unrivaled, WNBPA, and OneTeam partner to boost athlete revenue, sponsorship, and merchandising deals across leagues (Feb. 27th)
- OneTeam appointed as exclusive licensing agency for memorabilia
- WNBPA to grant Unrivaled group player rights; Unrivaled to compensate WNBPA [OneTeam]
Stats Perform, a sports data service, partners with new global professional track league, Grand Slam Track for exclusive data and betting rights (Feb. 26th)
- GS Track, founded by Olympic legend Michael Johnson, kicks off April 2025
- Stats Perform named official global data, betting rights distributor, and integrity partner for Grand Slam Track [Insider Sport]
WBD Sports Europe partners with Shaun White’s ‘The Snow League’ for a multi-year broadcast deal in Europe (Feb. 26th)
- Live streaming of Season 1, featuring four events at top resorts in Aspen, Switzerland, and China
- Snowboarding stars, including Ayumu Hirano and Chaeun Lee (M), Queralt Castellet and Sena Tomita (W), to compete for the World Champion title [Eurosport]
Sacramento Kings, Ticketmaster partner with haptic-tech startup, OneCourt, to enhance fan experience for blind fans at Golden 1 Center (Feb. 24th)
- Following partnership with Portland Trail Blazers back in January
- Devices allow low-vision fans to experience live games via real-time vibrations and audio updates [NBA]