🔊 Disney CEO Buys A Soccer Team

📰 TOP STORY
Bob Iger & Willow Bay Complete Angel City Soccer Club Acquisition

• Bob Iger & Willow Bay Complete $250M Angel City Acquisition. Angel City FC is now the world's most valuable women's sports team following an agreement by Willow Bay and Bob Iger to purchase a controlling stake in the NWSL franchise at a $250M valuation. Bay, the dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and Iger, the CEO of the Walt Disney Company, will become the new majority owners of the Los Angeles-based club. The couple will also invest an additional $50M into the club. Last year, Angel City FC generated the highest revenue of any women’s team globally. It was also No. 1 in NWSL attendance and sponsorship revenue. They join an ownership group that includes other prominent individuals such as Natalie Portman, Julie Uhrman, Alexis Ohanian, and Gillian Berry (more here).

💰 MONEY MOVES 
WNBA Announces New Media Rights Deal

• WNBA Gets $2.2B Media Rights Deal. The WNBA will earn an estimated $2.2B as part of the NBA’s multi-year deals with NBC, Amazon, and Disney for broadcasting rights. The new deals, spanning the next 11 seasons, will increase the value of the WNBA’s media rights from about $60M per year to $200M per year. The league’s current media rights deals will expire after the 2025 season and the NBA, which owns about 60% of the WNBA, negotiated the WNBA’s new deals that were approved by the NBA’s board of governors (more here).

• Avenue Sports Fund Invests $1.9B In Trackhouse Entertainment Group. Marc Lasry’s Avenue Sports Fund announced it has acquired a significant minority stake in Trackhouse Entertainment Group, the parent company to Trackhouse Racing, which competes in the NASCAR Cup Series and MotoGP. Trackhouse Racing, founded by Justin Marks, a former NASCAR and sports car racer, debuted in 2021 and has won seven Cup Series races with drivers Daniel Suárez, Ross Chastain, and Shane van Gisbergen (more here).

• Luscid Raises £1M For Sports Sponsorship Platform. Luscid, a startup that has developed a software platform for brands to find and track sponsorship opportunities using data-driven insights, has secured £1M in seed funding. The company was founded by Damien Gillman in 2022 with Harry Coe, son of Olympic champion distance runner and now World Athletics chief Lord Sebastian Coe, to bring a data-driven approach to sports and entertainment sponsorships (more here).

• Pelotero Raises $3M For Youth Baseball Video-Based Assessment & Digital Training Platform. Pelotero, a company that collects data from phone videos, using computer vision, and other tracking inputs to identify athlete strengths and weaknesses has raised $3M to democratize access to player development support with an app-based model. The company was founded by former Minnesota Twin and Toronto Blue Jay first baseman Chris Colabello and hitting coach Bobby Tewksbary (more here).

• Soccerverse Raises $3.1M For Blockchain Soccer Game. Soccerverse, a blockchain-based multiplayer soccer game, announced a $3.1M fundraise led by Japanese gaming giant Square-Enix alongside previous backer Hiro Capital. The game, which is currently available in beta, is a blockchain-based sports simulation similar to the Football Manager series that allows users to take on various roles such as coaching a team or representing a player. It runs on the Polygon blockchain and, while free-to-play, features web3 functionality. Soccerverse has raised $4M so far (more here).

 🤝 PARTNERSHIPS
X (Twitter) & Genius Sports Launch Trend Genius

• X & Genius Sports Partner To Launch Trend Genius. Ahead of the summer Olympic & Paralympic Games, X and Genius Sports announced the launch of the Trend Genius product. This new product leverages real-time conversations to accelerate ad attention in moments that matter. The new technology, which is built by Genius Sports and powered by X’s Ads and Trend APIs, will also allow advertisers to align with the real-time conversations happening on the X platform across categories (more here).

• TOCA Football Partners With MLS. TOCA Football, a leading technology-enabled soccer experience company, announced its plan to partner with the MLS to bring TOCA Social to the US in advance of the World Cup. TOCA Social Dallas is set to open at The Colony's Grandscape in the Dallas-Fort Worth Area in the summer of 2025. TOCA Social combines the best of soccer, entertainment, and world-class dining, creating a unique and immersive experience for players of all ages and skill levels. TOCA Social Dallas will be the first venue in the US, setting the stage for a nationwide expansion (more here).

• Google, Team USA & NBCUniversal Sign AI Partnership. Google, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and media heavyweight NBCUniversal have announced a new partnership, with Google being named the official search AI partner of Team USA. As part of the deal, Google will integrate sponsored content formats such as ways to search and explore the Olympic and Paralympic Games with Google Search and related AI features, within NBCUniversal’s coverage. NBCUniversal’s content will use Google’s suite of consumer products, including Search, Maps, and Google’s AI chatbot Gemini (more here).

• Southampton Signs A New Shirt Sponsorship Deal With Rollbit. English soccer club Southampton has announced online cryptocurrency and NFT gambling company Rollbit as their new front-of-shirt partner. Launched in 2020, Rollbit is making huge strides in online gaming, esports, and entertainment (more here).

• ATP, TDI & Sportradar Launch AI-Powered Service To Protect Players From Online Abuse. ATP, Tennis Data Innovations (TDI), and Sportradar have teamed up to launch Safe Sport, a new service to address online abuse targeting professional tennis players. The collaboration breaks new ground by integrating AI moderation, education, and investigation into a single service to protect athletes (more here).

• North Texas Sports Tech Startups Announce Merger Focused On Fan Engagement. The founders of two North Texas startups, Snipitz Global and rikodi, have merged their operations to form a new company called Providential Media Group. The combined business will be based in McKinney with an initial focus on the $225B fan engagement, sports media, and data markets (more here).

🔊 ATHLETES & OTHER SPORTS NEWS
Bobby Wagner Is Planning For Life After Football

• Bobby Wagner Is Making Strategic Business Moves Off The Field. Bobby Wagner is planning for life after the league from investing in Andreessen Horowitz’s Cultural Leadership Fund to tripling his investment in Denali Technologies (more here).

• Las Vegas NBA Team Set To Be Most Expensive US Sports Franchise. The looming bidding war for the NBA expansion team expected to be granted to Las Vegas is shaping up to be the most competitive and expensive sports deal in US history. The list of potential suitors spans LeBron James and his backers to the company that owns the Red Bull brand. The total price tag including building a new arena could hit $7B, according to two sports advisers who have previously sold NBA teams (more here).

• The Olympics Might Be A Massive Opportunity For Athletes & Brands. Every four years, the Summer Olympics are a huge opportunity for brands to reach global fans through sport and for athletes to build names for themselves on one of the world's biggest stages. Social media has created more of these opportunities for athletes and brands, and it's grown by leaps and bounds since the last Summer Games in Tokyo in 2021 and the Winter Olympics in 2022 (more here).

• Elevating The Playing Field: How Advisors Can Give Athletes The Power To Be Active Financial Partners. Athletes have long been bystanders when it comes to their finances. The traditional model has been for advisors to handle all the decisions and investments, leaving the athlete out of the process. But this approach is not acceptable to today’s pros—and based on recent NIL developments, college athletes—many of whom want to be active participants, not spectators, in their financial journey. For young professional athletes like Caitlin Clark and Caleb Williams, and the next crop of superstar college athletes, the financial journey is just beginning, and getting off on proper footing is critical to setting up long-term financial success (more here).

• ScoutSMART Launches Recruiting Analytics For Flag Football. ScoutSMART, the innovative provider of football recruiting analytics, announced the launch of analytics for the fast-growing sport of flag football. The company is actively integrating girls' flag football player profiles into its database, positioning itself as the leading company in the field (more here).

• Fanatics Launches Collectibles Marketplace Fanatics Collect. Fanatics announced the launch of Fanatics Collect, a new collectibles marketplace that will connect buyers and sellers of trading cards and memorabilia through fixed-price listings and auctions (more here).

• Going All In On Women's Sports With Monarch Collective's Jasmine Robinson. Monarch Collective's Jasmine Robinson tells Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly about the business case for investing in women's sports leagues. Jasmine explains how her $150M fund decided to invest in the WNBA and NWSL and how she sees future growth opportunities for women's sports (more here).