Esports betting platform Midnite has raised a $16 million Series A round led by The Raine Group, whose advisors include former Brooklyn Nets CEO and Turner president David Levy. Midnite will use the funds to build out its online products, which let users wager on their own performance in video games and bet on esports leagues.
London-based Midnite is licensed by the British Gambling Commission, has soft-launched in Brazil and expects to soon launch in Mexico. The company’s betting offerings cover video games such as FIFA, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Raine Group’s portfolio includes investments in DraftKings, the Premier Lacrosse League and youth sports organizer Reigning Champs. Raine Group co-founder John Salter will join Midnite’s Board of Directors, while managing director Garrett Gomes will become a Board Observer at the startup.
The International Olympic Committee and game developer nWay have launched Olympic Games Jam: Beijing 2022, a new mobile game for IOS and Android devices that debuts one day before the opening ceremony in Beijing. Users will compete against each other in ski and snowboard contests to earn Olympic NFT digital pins.
The NFTs can be bought, sold and traded on the nWayPlay marketplace. nWay, which announced a licensing deal with the IOC in June, is owned by Animoca Brands. In January, Animoca Brands raised $358 million to “grow the open metaverse.” Animoca’s subsidiaries include metaverse video game The Sandbox.
Animoca and its subsidiaries have previously made blockchain-based games for English soccer’s Manchester City, MotoGP and Formula 1. By collecting nWay’s NFTs in its new Olympic video game, users can enhance their avatars with better speed, control and stronger resistance to hazards on the digital snow slopes.
NFTs are increasingly being added into video games, while cryptocurrency firm FTX launched a $2 billion venture fund last month that will prioritize blockchain’s integration with gaming. Ubisoft, developer of video games such as the Assassin’s Creed franchise, is one company that has not seen its gamers have a positive initial reaction to NFT integration.
“I think gamers don’t get what a digital secondary market can bring to them,” Ubisoft strategic innovations lab VP Nicolas Pouard told Finder. “For now, because of the current situation and context of NFTs, gamers really believe it’s first destroying the planet, and second just a tool for speculation. But what we [at Ubisoft] are seeing first is the end game. The end game is about giving players the opportunity to resell their items once they’re finished with them or they’re finished playing the game itself.”
The Players’ Lounge, an NFT developer built by four former University of Georgia football players, has partnered with Icon Source, an AI-enabled marketplace that connects NCAA athletes with potential sponsors based on social media audience demographics.
The Players Lounge debuted its first set of Georgia Bulldog-focused NFTs Jan. 9, dubbed Digitally Generated Dogs, the day before Georgia played Alabama in the College Football Playoff title game. The NFTs sold out in less than four hours. The Players Lounge allows student athletes to leverage the NCAA’s name, image and likeness rules to earn money through NFT sales, with 50% of the revenue from DGD sales returning to Georgia players.
Partnering with Icon Source—which has built an NCAA-compliant business model and serves a large roster of athletes—will allow The Players’ Lounge to secure partnerships with more college athletes and athletic programs while abiding by NCAA regulations on athlete payment.
The Italian Football Federation (FIGC), the governing body of soccer in Italy, has announced a three-year partnership with AI video highlight platform WSC Sports to capture video highlights of FIGC’s Serie A TimVision—Italy’s highest women’s soccer league.
WSC uses machine learning and advanced artificial intelligence to analyze game film and distinguish specific events that happen in-game, storing each segment as a video highlight without requiring a human video editor. FIGC will have access to all WSC video highlight development tools, including the ability to cut video highlights for distribution across social media channels.
FIGC joins a growing list of international women’s soccer leagues whose video highlights are managed by WSC, including England’s Women’s Super League and Puerto Rican Football Federation’s Liga Puerto Rico. WSC has also provides soccer highlights for Brazil’s Globo Media, sports betting operators and Extreme E Racing.
The PGA Tour and TrackMan have extended and expanded their partnership to include ball tracking and tracing capabilities for every shot in a Tour event all season. The data and visualizations will be implemented immediately on digital platforms—such as OTT streams and PGA Tour sites and apps—and will extend to domestic television partners in 2023, replacing integrations from Toptracer. TrackMan will also help fuel the widely distributed ShotLink data.
TrackMan will supply the Tour with its next-generation Mega launch monitor, an enterprise unit that uses a 3D Doppler radar and two cameras for optically–enhanced radar tracking data. The units capture dozens of metrics, including club speed, ball speed, spin and launch angle. Advanced algorithms and aerodynamic models help calculate the impact of environmental factors such as wind, weather and altitude.
About 40 monitors are placed around the course, mostly at tee boxes and greens. But TrackMan’s new mobile unit will now track shots from the fairway and even capture shots mid-flight when they originate behind a tree or other visual obstacle.
The PGA Tour and Amazon Web Services began their partnership a year ago, and several AWS products, including the Fargate elastic compute platform, will be used to deliver this TrackMan data close to real time. The PGA Tour and TrackMan have been partners since 2006, during which time they had signed three consecutive five-year agreements. Terms of this contract were not disclosed, but it is understood to be a multi-year deal with options to extend it.
The NHL has selected Australian telecommunications firm Telstra to distribute as many as 1,400 hockey game broadcasts annually over its Global Media Network (GMN). The agreement is for five years and will provide coverage to rightsholders in Europe, the Middle East and Africa at the outset, with plans for expansion.
Telstra will utilize its broadcast operations centers in Sydney, London and Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh facility opened in June 2021 to provide the telco with a U.S. hub and meet the strong demand for content originating in North America.
Telstra has been an active sports partner in Australia, creating augmented reality apps for the Australian Football League after previously streaming live matches. It has also sponsored the Telstra Tracker, a live in-game wearable data component that has even shown players’ heart rates live on TV.
Through this partnership, the NHL hopes to provide custom live hockey experiences to different regions and expand its footprint to new international markets.
Sports streaming service FloSports has announced a new partnership with blockchain company Tezos. The deal will run through 2024.
Tezos will become the title sponsor for FloSports’ grappling event series Who’s Number One and sponsor other wrestling and motorsports events on FloSports. The Tezos blockchain will be used to create NFT fan experiences for FloSports subscribers, including tokens based on live events and individual athletes.
FloSports marks Tezos’ first partnership with a sports streaming service. Last year, Tezos partnered with the New York Mets to feature Tezos signage on the centerfield scoreboard at Citi Field.
The NFL has awarded $1 million in funding to study the effects of cannabis on pain management, performance and neuroprotection from concussions among football players. Research teams from the University of California San Diego and University of Regina were selected to receive the funding out of 106 applicants.
Elite football players will take part in the studies from both universities, although NFL players will not take part in either study as cannabis remains a banned substance by the league. The studies are expected to take three years to conduct.
The UC-San Diego study will see athletes vaporize cannabis following games where they sustained a soft-tissue injury. The study will assess the therapeutic and adverse effects of THC and CBD compared to a placebo used on players. Researchers will monitor outcomes via remote mobile apps.
Canada’s University of Regina will be more focused on concussions. Researchers will aim to determine whether cannabinoids can be used safely for pain management with post-concussion syndrome players and if its consumption can reduce their use of prescription medications (including opioids).
“This research will help inform people as to which strategies may be beneficial and then those that may not be,” NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills told the Associated Press. “And so I see this as being hugely impactful for the NFL, for all of the elite sport, but also sport at all levels across society.”
Spellman Performance, a leading speed coaching program, has partnered with muscle performance wearable Strive to help train athletes in advance of the NFL Scouting Combine.
Les Spellman has trained hundreds of elite athletes—Olympians, USA Rugby and scores of NFL players, including Super Bowl-bound Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow—through an evidence-based approach heavily reliant on tech and data. Spellman Performance also recently debuted the Universal Speed Rating, which ranks and trains athletes of all ages.
Strive uses sensor-laden compression shorts with EMG technology to track muscle function of the hamstrings, glutes and quadriceps. It also uses edge computing to allow athletes and coaches to track activity in real-time and has previously partnered with Kinexon, among others.
High school and youth esports organizer PlayVS has partnered with video game publisher Activision Blizzard to offer student competitions for Hearthstone and Overwatch. Overwatch will now be a part of the PlayVS Youth League game lineup, while Hearthstone will be featured in regional high school league play.
The two video games join other titles supported by PlayVS, such as EA’s Madden NFL, Nintendo’s Mario Kart and Psyonix’s Rocket League. PlayVS also signed a multi-year deal with Riot Games in 2020 to become the exclusive organizer of high school League of Legends competitions in the U.S.
Investors in PlayVS include the venture capital arm of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the San Francisco 49ers, Adidas and Samsung NEXT. Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard earlier this month for $68.7 billion, the highest price ever paid by a U.S. tech company in an acquisition.
A group of eight startups have been selected to the Arsenal Innovation Lab, a seven-week program hosted by the English Premier League club. The club aims to collaborate with startups whose products can improve the fan experience.
The selected startups include video data provider Endava, online game developers Forza Insider and Live Tech Games, online cocktail drink-making guide Moonberries, immersive audio startup Salsa Sound, interactive scanning technology startup Sodyo, interactive streaming platform Valorafutbol and Versus Africa, which studies consumer behavior trends in Africa.
Arsenal originally launched its innovation lab in 2017. The program will invest more than $300,000 in the startups to help develop their products. Each company will pitch the club at the end of the seven-week program for potential further collaboration. Yolo Group, whose Sportsbet.io brand is a betting partner of Arsenal, is serving as managing partner of the program.
