The 4th Quarter: Month Two Update & Latest In Sports Tech This Week, April 4th

A Thank You to Our Subscribers, Endeavor Goes Private, Weekly Job Board

Pictured: Suraj & Sid with the Wharton Undergraduate Sports Business Club 3/28/24

Skip To What You Want To Read ⬇️

I. A Thank You to The 4th Quarter Community

II. Weekly Startup Spotlight:FanCave & Oddsview

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

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

Our 2 Month Anniversary & A Thank You to You:

Hi family, instead of our regularly scheduled intro piece on an emerging trend in sports, gaming, fitness, media, and entertainment tech spaces, we have realized we’ve never formally thanked you for joining us on this journey. Since launching two months ago, we’ve been able to create a vibrant community of 202 teammates that follow The 4th Quarter weekly - spanning careers such as sports business journalists, teachers & professors, venture capitalists, finance professionals, founders, early-stage operators, to college students! 

This past week, we were both invited to speak at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business’s Undergraduate Sports Business Club. We spoke about how launching a sports-tech newsletter has allowed us to stay up-to-date on the bleeding edge market activity & innovations in the space, and encouraged the students to try something entrepreneurial - even something as small as a newsletter. So damn grateful to have met 25 amazing students who decided it was worthwhile to hear some strangers speak instead of going out on a Thursday night.

What started out as a creative outlet has turned into something we never would have imagined. To each of you - thank you for sparing us in your inbox, and we hope you continue this pursuit with us. We look forward to meeting and cultivating a personal relationship with each and every one of you. 

- Sid and Suraj

Weekly Startup Spotlight:

In honor of the most prestigious startup incubator in the world hosting their Demo Day this week, here are a few Y Combinator (YC) startups that innovating in the sports-tech space :

• FanCave - After seeing The Blind Side, did you ever want to become a college athletics booster and recruit the best talent to your favorite school? What if you don’t have the capital? That might not be an issue anymore. Emerging from Y Combinator’s demo day literally days ago (Tuesday April 2nd), founders Luke and Nick sought to capture the changing NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) market with an innovative platform that allows fans to fundraise and pay nationally ranked high school athletes in hopes to convince the athlete to choose the fans’ favorite college. For example, fans from UGA, USC, Alabama, and more can try to sway a 5-star Quarterback’s decision based on how much money fans raise. If the athlete picks a certain school, he or she is entitled to all of the money that fans raised, and if not, funds are returned to fans. In just a week of launch, $1000 has already been pledged by fans across the nation. 

  • Founders: Luke Bogus, Nick Siscoe

  • Funding: Raised $500K from Y Combinator, and participation from other investors will be following shortly!

• Oddsview - Wall Street OFFICIALLY meets Sports Betting. Similar to the Bloomberg Terminals found in the offices of bankers and financiers, this gritty team of five co-founders built the ‘Bloomberg Terminal of Sports Betting’ and are empowering sports bettors to bet like traders. In the last six years, 30 states have legalized sports betting, leading to 25M online sports bettors to wager $85B+ in this last year alone. Instead of relying on your ‘gut instinct’ or doing scrappy analysis on your own, a new betting analysis tool is set to turbocharge bettors! Oddsview allows users to browse millions of odds that are updated in real time to find the best bets, access features like positive expected value and arbitrage opportunities, and historical odds charts on just one platform. Also emerging from Y Combinator just a few days prior, it looks like this team has a bright future ahead. 

• Founder: Davis Tong, Ajay Koritala, Akaash Patel, Anthony Ter-Saakov, Henri Zhang

• Funding: Raised $500K from Y Combinator and incoming participation from other investors is imminent!

Sports-Tech Market Activity: Investors & Deals

Venture Capital

• Greenfly, an AI short-form content platform that has partnerships with 100+ sports franchises, leagues, and brands, raised $14M in a VC round (April 4th)

  • Attracting investors due to short-form content’s momentum in sports media

  • Investment was led by ADvantage VC; other investors include Ryan Sports Ventures, Elysian Park Ventures, Verance Capital, and Iconica Partners [Sportico]

• Miach Orthopaedics, a healthcare company developing a new proprietary method for repairing ACL tears, raised $20M in a Series B extension round (April 2nd)

  • Innovating ACL tear surgeries through its recent innovation: Bridge-Enhanced ACL Restoration Implant

  • Investment was led by the Major League Soccer Players Association (MLSPA); other investors in Miach’s research include Boston Children’s Hospital and the National Institutes of Health [SBJ]

• Higgsfield AI, a video content creation platform, raised $8M in Seed funding (April 3rd)

  • Its app, Diffuse, develops highly personalized and realistic human characters in a video format from just a single selfie

  • Investment was led by Menlo Ventures; other investors include Charge Ventures, Bitkraft Ventures, K5 Tokyo Black, and others [FinSMEs]

• Shifty Eye Games, a Canada-based independent game development studio, raised CAD$788.5K in funding (April 2nd)

  • Investment was led by the company’s CEo and Founder Tuncer Deniz [FinSMEs]

M&A and Investments

• Silver Lake takes Endeavor, the sports & entertainment conglomerate with majority positions in TKO Group Holdings, UFC, and WWE, private for $13B (April 2nd)

  • Endeavor faced public scrutiny due to its significant leverage, $5.1B of outstanding debt, which will be easier to manage as a private entity

  • Debt financing was committed by Goldman, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and other mega banks

  • Silver Lake will also invest $250M in a new media company led by Endeavor co-founder Patrick Whitesell  [SBJ]

• Authentic Brands Group will buy the sports apparel brand Champion for ~$1B (April 3rd)

  • Hanesbrands decided to offload the company due to its recent struggle with declining sales/profits, with sales declining by 12% in Q4 2023 [Fashion Network]

• Elevate, a leading sports brand consulting firm, acquired Fenway Sports Management’s Consulting Group, for an undisclosed amount (April 1st)

  • Acquisition will add blue chip clients to Elevate’s roster: Moderna, Santander Bank, Wasabi Technologies, Monster.com, and others [Sportico]

• BC Partners’ credit arm lends $400M to Riddell, a leading American football sports equipment company (April 2nd)

  • $300M will be used to return capital to shareholders while the other $100M will pay off existing debt [SBJ]

• Former and current MLB players recently invested in Perfect Game, a youth baseball platform, at an undisclosed amount (April 4th)

  • Will provide expertise to help grow the company’s platform [Perfect Game]

Photo: Mega PE-firm Silver Lake takes Endeavor private

Strategic Ventures

• Fitness-tech company Form is launching its second-gen smart swimming goggles for $250 (April 2nd)

  • Provides AR visualization for swim training, providing real-time visual feedback [Venture Beat]

• Springbok Analytics, an athlete performance-tech company that evaluates the musculoskeletal system using AI to generate 3D images, is partnering with Leicester FC (April 1st)

  • The premier league team will use Springbok’s technology to evaluate and enhance player performance [SBJ]

• The Masters, in partnership with IBM, will add AI-generated features in their app and streaming platform for the Augusta Nationals (April 2nd)

  • Includes a “Hole Insights” feature, that will include in-depth data on every hole [SBJ]

• Hexis, a personalized sports nutrition app, will partner with TrainingPeaks, a digital coaching platform, to provide precise nutrition metrics based on workout routines (April 4th)

  • Provides custom meal plans and mid-workout fueling amounts to optimize user’s health [SBJ]

• TeamSnap, a youth sports management platform, is launching new training content in collaboration with MLS, MLB, and FC Barcelona (April 2nd)

  • MLS will release a coaching curriculum, MLS Go Playbook, through TeamSnap’s platform [SBJ]

• ActionStreamer is partnering with UFL to provide helmet camera technology for the regular season and playoffs (April 4th)

  • Will provide a point-of-view (POV) of football players for viewers [PR Newswire]

Fundraising

• Arctos Partners, a major sports private equity firm, raised $4.1B in their new sports fund (April 2nd)

  • Funds will be used to build their sports asset class, which includes franchises in F1, NBA, MLB, etc. [SBJ]

• Bitkraft Ventures, a major gaming VC firm, raises its third gaming fund of $275M (April 3rd)

  • Total assets under management will reach over $1B [Venture Beat]

IPO’s

• Flutter Entertainment, the holding company of FanDuel, is preparing switch from the London Stock Exchange to NYSE (April 1st)

  • Shareholder vote will be on May 1st [SBJ]

• IndyCar driver Michael Andretti’s SPAC took Zapata - an industrial-based generative AI company - public through a reverse merger (April 1st)

  • Stock dropped by 54% in its debut on the NASDAQ [SBJ]

Job Board & Opportunities: Week April 4th, 2024

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. First Horizon Bank - Music, Sports, & Entertainment Commercial Banking Intern

2. Hollywood Park - Finance & Accounting Intern: $19-20/hr

3. AEG WorldWide - Global Partnerships Activations Summer Intern: $19/hr

4. Elevate - Senior Analyst, Insights: ~ 2 Years of Experience / $80K

5. Atlanta Hawks - Global Partnerships Coordinator: ~ 2 Years of Experience

6. Swish Analytics - Data Engineer - Trading Analytics: ~1 Year of Experience

7. Seattle Mariners - Brand Insights Analyst: ~ 2 Years of Experience / $73K

8. PrizePicks - Senior Product Manager: ~5 Years of Experience

9. Arizona Cardinals: Director & VP of Analytics & Data Strategy: ~8 Years of Experience

10. U.S. Bank - Biz Development Consultant, Sports & Entertainment: 9 Years of Exp / $123K