The 4th Quarter: Latest In Sports Tech This Week, April 12th, 2025

Sand Hill Road’s Entertainment Thesis, Celebrity Gaming League Raises $10M, New Job Board

Apr 12, 2025

Khosla’s New Early-Stage Thesis: Entertainment

Akin to NYC’s Wall Street, LA’s Hollywood, and D.C.’s K Street, Silicon Valley has long had its own precious gem: Sand Hill Road. For decades, ambitious founders have journeyed to this one-mile stretch outside of Stanford’s campus to fundraise from legendary venture capital firms.

Historically, these funds have invested in broad verticals like Clean Energy, Healthcare, FinTech, Enterprise - chasing promising, predictable & scalable returns. Tier-1 VCs like Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, and Benchmark have dominated these sectors at the early stage, leaving entertainment verticals like gaming, music, and sports to niche or later-stage investors.

But now, Khosla Ventures - founded by Sun Microsystems’ Vinod Khosla in 2004 - is flipping the script. Khosla is making a strategic push into entertainment, marking a sharp departure from the traditional Sand Hill Road playbook - and signaling a broader shift in how VCs are starting to view cultural and creative industries.

Here’s the Rundown:

For the past 20+ years, Tier-1 funds have occasionally sprinkled capital into entertainment startups - but none have run a dedicated entertainment investment strategy.

Meanwhile, since 2020, Khosla has quietly been building a stellar portfolio in the entertainment space:

Sports & Streaming: Playback
Gaming & Interactive Media: Rosebud AI, Quell, Moonvalley, Storycraft
Music & Audio Tech: Splash, Hook
Content Creation: Inkitt

And in just the past two weeks, They’ve made 3 major entertainment investments:

Hook’s $3M in follow-on funding
Playback’s $22M Series A
Storycraft’s $3M Seed

Other Tier-1 VCs are Making Similar Moves:

In 2022, Andreessen Horowitz launched $600M a16z Games Fund One.
In 2023, A16z launched Speedrun, a startup accelerator focused on gaming.
In 2025, a16z changed Speedrun’s focus from purely gaming to broader Entertainment.
- Speedrun has now deployed over $100M in capital to over 120 gaming & entertainment startups.
In 2023, Lightspeed and Faction launched Lightspeed Faction, a $285M fund investing in early blockchain projects with a big emphasis on gaming.
- Lightspeed also has a strong gaming thesis out of its flagship fund.

For Founders: What’s More Strategic - Sand Hill Road VCs or Sector Specialized Investors?

Aside from the prestige of adding a big brand name on your cap table (which can help with future fundraising), it’s unclear if these funds will actually open doors to sports teams, music labels, or other potential customers in the space.

But, what’s clear to us: there is more capital ready to be deployed. And that’s good news for founders - more optionality, more opportunity.

For Specialized VCs: New Sharks are Entering Your Waters.

The takeaway is simple: you HAVE to provide irreplaceable value to founders - whether you invest in them or not.

That’s how you ensure founders keep you in mind to come back to your fund (for their next round or next company) - and are not swooned by the shiny logos lining Sand Hill Road.

Sports-Tech Market Activity: Investors & Deals

Venture Capital

Storycraft, a social AI game that turns a user’s imagination into playable worlds, raises $3M in Seed funding from Khosla Ventures (Apr. 11th)
- Follows a previous $2M pre-seed round led by LVP and SignalFire
- Accelerating the global multi-platform launch of a multiplayer mobile game built on Google Cloud [Linkedin]
The Global Gaming League, a celebrity-led gaming initiative featuring teams of popular personalities & influencers, secures $10M on a SAFE (Apr. 8th)
- Converging fan bases across gaming, sports, and fashion among others
- Offers celebrity owners a sports franchise-like investment without the same hassle via sales, merchandising, and staffing support
- Investment led by Solyco Capital [VentureBeat]
Agonalea Games, the studio behind Punko.io, raises $2M in Seed funding from mobile gaming fund Mika Games (Apr. 10th)
- Funding further development of Punk.io, strategic support for new developments, and global expansion efforts
- Marking its third studio investment in under 12 months from overall $50M investment plan [VentureBeat]
SponsorCX, a sponsorship management platform for sports, the arts, and entertainment organizations, raises $4.6M in funding ahead of product launch (Apr. 9th)
- Supporting launch of a brand-focused CRM to modernize sponsorship tracking
- Serves ~ 200 clients including teams in North America’s 5 major sports and D1 college programs
- Investment led by Kickstart; other investors include Pluralsight and Spiff co-founders [SBJ]
UNA Watch, a wearable tech startup that develops modular & upgradeable GPS sports watches, raises £200K in funding via crowdfunding platform Kickstarter (Apr. 7th)
- New funds will support product development and operational scaling
- Follows a previous £300K investment from SFC Capital [FinSMEs]

M&A and Investments

British investment management company Lindsell Train, a key Man United investor, offloads 13% of its ManU stake (Apr. 4th)
- Sold over 700K Class A shares in Q1 2025, shrinking ownership to 9.3%
- Once ManU’s top shareholder, Lindsell has steadily reduced its stake since early 2024 with Ariel Investments replacing the institutional player [Sportico]
Michele Kang commits $25M to the Soccer Forward Foundation, integrating Kynisca Innovation Hub to fuel women’s soccer R&D (Apr. 4th)
- Follows Kang’s initial $30M commitment to the foundation last November
- Driving health-focused research and training innovation for female athletes
- Marks the largest investment in the foundation's history, targeting global standards for women’s performance [U.S. Soccer]
CYVN Holdings, an Abu Dhabi-based growth equity investment company, finalizes McLaren Automotive buyout, launches new group structure (Apr. 3rd)
- Majority stake in McLaren Automotive along with minority stake in McLaren Racing
- Strategy includes portfolio expansion and turnaround plan to drive global growth
- New McLaren Group Holdings formed, merging Forseven and McLaren under CEO Nick Collins [McLaren]
Paramount Global, Skydance Media’s $8B merger deadline pushed 90 days amid regulatory hurdles, as agreed per SEC filing terms (Apr. 7th)
- Deal automatically extended as no agreement was reached by April 7
- SEC and European Commission have approved; FCC remains the final barrier
- FCC’s review complicated by political tensions, Trump lawsuit vs. CBS, and DEI policy scrutiny [ScreenDaily]
National Rugby League (AUS) eyes 33% Super League (UK) stake in bid to overhaul European rugby league, possibly renaming league (Apr. 9th)
- Proposed investment tied to NRL gaining full administrative control from 2028
- Plan includes downsizing Super League to 10 teams, expanding into France and London [SportsPro]

Photo Creds: The Global Gaming League raises $10M led by Solyco Capital.

Strategic Ventures

MLS partners with digital asset management startup ScorePlay to streamline league-wide operations and enhance digital fan engagement (Apr. 8th)
- Providing centralized media hub with real-time access for all 30 MLS clubs
- Platform auto-tags athletes, events, and sponsors across MLS, Leagues Cup, and All-Star content [MLS]
Lucra Sports partners with Chess Kings, a chess-focused fantasy gaming pursuit, to bring real-money chess competition online (Apr. 7th)
- Initial launch in the U.S. with plans for international expansion by end of 2025
- Lucra’s tech powers Chess Kings' platform, enhancing user engagement and gameplay [Reuters]
Atlanta Hawks debut NBA’s first official content creator collective following successful ‘soft-launch’ last year (Apr. 10th)
- Includes 25 mid-sized influencers with a total combined reach of 14.9M followers
- Members receive paid opportunities and exclusive access to games, training tours, and team events
- Collective to serve as future sponsorship asset, though no deals are currently signed [SBJ]
Xsolla, a fintech platform that makes payment software for video games, partners with 3D template fashion company Altava to embed luxury fashion into games (Apr. 10th)
- Altava previously took part in LVMH’s La Maison des Startups accelerator
- Brings 3K+ branded 3D fashion assets from 20+ luxury labels, including Balmain and Fendi
- Allows developers to monetize fashion IP via avatar customization, marketplaces, and in-game events [VentureBeat]
NFL’s Next Gen Stats, AWS launch analytics dashboard Draft IQ to decode team strategy for fans using advanced analytics (Apr. 10th)
- Aims to boost fan engagement by revealing data-backed draft board insights
- Real-time dashboard to update every 5 minutes during NFL Draft, offering trade predictions and team needs
- Built with Amazon QuickSight and NFL Next Gen Stats, extending AWS’s Combine IQ project [SBJ]

Pittsburgh Steelers teams up with Bundesliga’s Borussia Dortmund in global fan engagement deal (Apr. 3rd)
- Includes co-branded events, digital content, and youth flag football clinic at BVB Academy in Germany, with more joint activations planned [Bundesliga]