Any Distance, a social fitness app, announced a $1.5 million pre-seed round led by Bungalow Capital and joined by Overline, Fitt Insider, Shorewind Capital, OliveX, The Gramercy Fund and more than 30 angel investors.
A mobile app available for iPhone and Apple Watch users, Any Distance gamifies activity by allowing users to earn collectibles and experience routes in 3D and augmented reality. The stated goal is to motivate and celebrate rather than compete and compare.
Founder and CEO Luke Beard, a photographer and the founder visual storytelling company Exposure, began walking more during the pandemic and shared his journeys with photos and statistical templates, which gained an organic following. His co-founder, Dan Kuntz, previously founded two companies in the music industry. Any Distance is based in Atlanta.
Four days following the Ohio launch of the Bally Sports+ app, the Cleveland Cavaliers are granting complementary game streams to cord-cutters who are Cavs United season ticket holders, foundation members or corporate partners.
Up until the launch of the app, Cavalier fans could only watch the team’s games live — broadcast by Bally Sports Ohio — through a third-party TV provider such as cable, satellite or the only streaming service available in the state, DirecTV Stream. But as a direct-to-consumer streaming app, Bally Sports+ provides cord-cutters with a suitable option.
However, with the app priced at $19.99 a month or $189.99 a year, Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert on Friday incentivized fans to join Cavs United — a team membership platform — by offering Bally Sports+ game streams for free to members who have partial or full season tickets.
The Ohio Bally Sports+ app will also broadcast games for the Columbus Blue Jackets of the NHL and the Columbus Crew of the MLS. The subscription streaming service became available in all of the Bally Sports’ 19 markets on Sept. 26 after originally debuting in Detroit, Kansas City, Miami, Tampa and Wisconsin over the summer.
Cavs owner Gilbert has been an active investor in streaming and technology through his Detroit Venture Partners and, in May, was part of a group that funded the smart dumbbells startup, Kabata.
Virtual cycling app MyWhoosh has been named a global partner and official virtual training plan of the upcoming World Triathlon Championship Finals in Abu Dhabi. MyWhoosh will host triathlon-specific virtual training events on its app and receive brand exposure at the governing body’s biggest race, which takes place Nov. 23-26.
A digital version of the bike course in Abu Dhabi has been added to MyWhoosh’s free cycling app, which also offers more than 700 workouts across virtual routes of varying inclines and distances for users to stream while riding their stationary bike trainers for an immersive indoor experience. The app will host a social group ride leading up to the Finals in which users can follow each other’s progress through their on-screen avatars.
MyWhoosh is marketed as a free alternative to Zwift, the subscription-based virtual cycling app that title sponsors the women's Tour de France and hosts esports cycling competitions with World Triathlon. MyWhoosh also sponsors UAE Team Emirates and their star cyclist Tadej Pogačar, who won the men’s Tour de France in 2020 and 2021.
The Scottish FA will implement Playermaker’s shoeworn wearables into its JD Performance Schools, a development program in operation since 2012.
Playermaker, which launched in 2019 and is a member of the FIFA Innovation Program, makes sensors that strap to the outside of an athlete’s cleats and provide physical and technical data for individuals and, when used by a whole team, can provide tactical analysis about possession and passing networks. Several elite European soccer clubs — including Premier League sides and Scotland’s storied Rangers FC — are already Playermaker users.
There are seven Scottish FA JD Performance Schools that select promising under-12 boys and girls and enroll them in four-year secondary school programs that include an extra 200 hours of coaching per year than the youth player would likely have elsewhere. Argentina’s national federation has been a Playermaker user since 2019, even outfitting its under-23 club with the devices for games leading up to the Olympics.
Bundesliga and Amazon Web Services are unveiling two new advanced metrics, Win Probability and Pressure Handling, this weekend that utilize player tracking data and AWS machine learning algorithms.
Just as AWS has powered the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, the tech giant partnered with the German football federation in January 2020, and they have now collaborated on 12 Bundesliga Match Facts. Win Probability is built on top of several prior AWS-metrics — Expected Goals, Skill and Set Piece Threat — to highlight changes in predicted outcome. Pressure Handling is storytelling stat to explain a player’s ability to escape defenders while retaining possession for his team.
These Bundesliga Match Facts are presented in broadcast graphics and in the league app; the league is streamed on ESPN+ in the US. The two new stats will first be introduced during Friday’s match between FC Bayern München and Bayer 04 Leverkusen.
“Hard-fought competition, pivotal plays, nonstop energy—it all happens on Bundesliga pitches, and we offer viewers deeper insights into what’s happening on the pitch with Bundesliga Match Facts powered by AWS,” Bundesliga International CMO Peer Naubert said in a statement. “A total of 95% of international Bundesliga fans participating in an online survey told us that these advanced statistics add value to their Bundesliga experience, and so we continue to create new Match Facts, driving the viewing experience for the millions of worldwide fans to new heights.”
LaLiga, enhancing its presence on social media, has partnered with Snapchat on a content platform deal that includes augmented reality lenses and in-app entertainment.
The made-for-mobile deal involves integrations such as Bitmojis, Cameos, filters and stickers. In addition, the Snapchat audience — estimated at 347 million daily active users — will have access to Discover Channel’s LaLiga Show Time, which streams weekly football highlights, archival footage, behind-the-curtain scenes and top LaLiga goals and saves.
Snapchat users also receive exclusive spotlight content via LaLiga’s Snap Star account. The Spanish soccer league has, in recent years, made social media and streaming a high priority. In 2020, LaLiga became the first major European soccer league to debut an official account on Twitch, featuring interviews with in Spanish and English with LaLiga players.
Curious about the value of a younger audience, the league’s technology arm LaLiga Tech previously collaborated on a study with Nielson that showed sports fans 34 and younger follow an average of 6.3 sports — higher than older generations. Social media is credited as a reason for that rise.
With the Big 12 Conference in flux due to the impending departures of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC, its commissioner Brett Yormark announced today that the league has hired WME Sports and IMG Media to comprehensively enhance its content, data, Web3 and commercial strategies.
In particular, WME and IMG—each under the Endeavor umbrella—will advise the Big 12 going forward on its multimedia rights negotiations, conference membership, social media, sports betting, NFTs, IP, sales analytics and valuation, premier asset assessment and fan engagement.
Although its marquee schools Texas and Oklahoma are due to leave the conference on July 1 2025, the Big 12 appealed to WME because of its “full spectrum’’ of assets that include Web3. WME is an entertainment agency that has experience negotiating across digital media. IMG, besides managing athletes, has expertise in licensing and league strategy.
By July of 2023 —assuming Texas and Oklahoma do not leave earlier than planned — the Big 12 will have 14 total members that include new entries BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston. The other holdover schools are Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech and West Virginia.
WME and IMG are slated to be part of television football contract negotiations that are set to expire at the end of the 2024 season. According to reports, Fox and ESPN are expected to be top bidders for the league’s multimedia rights.
Germany-based soccer media giant OneFootball has acquired Gloria, a soccer-centric social network whose investors include Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Seattle Sounders co-owner Peter Tomozawa. The deal will help grow women’s soccer content on OneFootball, while Gloria’s founder Victoire Cogevina has become VP of Women’s Football at OneFootball.
OneFootball has more than 100 million active users globally and features live scores, news and stats in addition to regional rights to livestream matches from top leagues such as Bundesliga, Scottish Premiership, Serie A, K League 1, the Champions League, Liga MX, Brasileiro Série A and more. Gloria has more than 400,000 followers on Instagram. In April, Gloria pledged $11 million for title sponsorship rights to a new women’s soccer league in Spain.
Ohanian, who co-owns NWSL club Angel City, invested in Gloria’s $3 million seed round raised in 2021. Gloria’s other investors include Muse Capital’s Assia Grazioli , an investor in NWSL club Washington Spirit and board member for Juventus FC.
Cogevina co-founded Gloria in 2018 originally with a focus on being a digital soccer scouting app but has since pivoted to being a community for soccer content with an emphasis on covering the women's game. She previously worked as an agent for pro soccer players in MLS and currently serves currently serves as a UN Women ambassador for Gender Equality in Football.
“Women football fans have long been an underserved community, with most products and services designed with only men in mind,” Cogevina said in a statement. “But in Europe alone there are 144 million women’s football fans who aren’t being engaged and catered for - that’s a lot of fans to onboard which present a huge commercial opportunity. When we first founded Gloria, we set out to build the world’s most inclusive football community. Now as part of OneFootball’s leadership team, I can truly cement that vision - driving in forward off the back of a larger platform, OneFootball.”
Thierry Henry, Arsenal’s all-time leading goal scorer and a World Cup winner with France, discussed his investment in virtual reality training company Rezzil and his thoughts on VAR technology in the sport.
Speaking at the Leaders Week sport business conference at Twickenham Stadium, Henry said he was immediately hooked by the “limitless” use cases of Rezzil. The VR technology, which is also backed by Gary Neville and Vincent Kompany, makes VR training programs for soccer, football, basketball and tennis. It has been adopted by Manchester City and participated in the inaugural cohort of the NBA Launchpad program.
Henry said the cognitive part of the game is underdeveloped, and when he first saw a demo of Rezzil, he said, “‘Okay, that’s something where I can see the game going.’ Because often you have a coach tell you, ‘I will make you faster, I’ll make you stronger and whatnot.’ But it’s weird that you cannot have something or someone that tells you, ‘I will make you smarter and help that muscle memory that you have.’”
He described the brain as the best camera one can buy and added, “I always say that your eyes are useless if your mind is blind.”
Henry, whose storied career also included notable stints at Barcelona and the New York Red Bulls, has been the head coach at Monaco and Montréal Impact. He is now an assistant for Belgium’s national team and shared his thoughts on VAR, the video assistant referee. Henry said VAR was helpful but that soccer could learn from other sports. He said it was “not quick enough,” particularly on goal reviews, describing a goal scorer not knowing whether to celebrate or not, pending the decision from VAR.
“It kills a bit of the joy of the game,” he said. “So we need to find a way that we don’t kill the joy of the game, and we get the right results in terms of what happened.”
Geolocation tech firm Xpoint has raised an undisclosed multi-million funding round to strengthen its place in the sports betting, iGaming and daily fantasy sport industries in the U.S. and worldwide.
The company’s newest investors are Acies Investments, The Raine Group and SuRo Capital Sports, who were also joined in the round by Xpoint’s original investors Better Capital and Courtside Ventures.
Xpoint Verify, the firm’s real-money gaming product, is currently operating live in New Jersey and Ontario, while its Xpoint Lite product that is geared toward fantasy sports operators is live throughout the U.S. with multiple partners. Both provide geolocation data to help with client marketing strategies.
As part of the round, the managing partner of Bettor Capital, David VanEgmond, will become one of Xpoint’s board of directors. Bettor Capital has long pointed to Xpoint’s software value to sportsbook and casino operator clients.
NASCAR is launching a new branded room inside Meta’s Horizon Worlds metaverse app for fans to watch on-demand race recaps in virtual reality through Meta’s Quest 2 headset. Starting Thursday Sept. 29, fans with Quest 2 can watch a 45-minute condensed stream of last weekend’s Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Guests will be able to interact with each other’s avatars in NASCAR’s room on Horizon Worlds, which will also offer race highlights and behind-the-scenes content in virtual reality. NASCAR plans to offer the same VR experiences around its Dixie Vodka 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Oct. 27 and the Cup Series Championship race at Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 10.
Meta is working with VR video startup YBVR to produce the races in an immersive format for Quest 2. NASCAR’s joins the NBA as leagues to have rooms inside Horizon Worlds after Meta launched NBA Lane in May. In 2020, NASCAR was the first league to partner with Facebook (now Meta) to host content around live races for the company’s second-screen app called Venues.