🔊 Inside The Company Building The Ecosystem Of Sports Data Capture

This week, PlayerData, a Scotland-founded performance tech company, raised $12 million in a Series A round led by Pentland Ventures, Darco Ventures, and Bolt Ventures. Tennis Australia and Kevin Durant's 35V also joined the round as new strategic investors.

PlayerData started by creating a lower-cost GPS wearable for athletes and has since expanded into connected ball technology and AI-powered video. Recently, they collaborated with Puma and Mitre to launch a soccer ball embedded with a GPS tracker to capture ball data.

The new funding will help scale these products and expand the team, which has grown about 40% over the past 18 months. The company has also moved its US headquarters from Philadelphia to Boston.

Why This Matters

Sports data has always been a fragmented space.

But PlayerData is changing the game and wants to own the whole thing.

Their Chief Commercial Officer, Jess Brodsky, said it best: "It was never just our intention to democratize wearables. We're really trying to create the ecosystem of data capture."

This isn’t just about another sports tech company raising $12 million.

It’s about the future of sports data and the company quietly assembling the full stack for sports performance, which includes GPS wearables, a connected soccer ball with an embedded tracker, and an AI-powered camera that ties it all together into one platform.

Each aspect is valuable on its own.

But when you combine them, they become a completely different product and ecosystem.

This provides teams and organizations with invaluable insights end-to-end that help improve everything from scouting to injury recovery and everything in between.

And right now, most of that capability lives exclusively at the elite level with the top clubs, the major leagues, the programs with major budgets.

Everyone else is mostly guessing or operating on limited and incomplete information.

But that’s the gap PlayerData is targeting, and the downstream trickle is critical, if you think about it.

As this data becomes more accessible, the development of athletes at the youth and collegiate levels will look fundamentally different.

Coaches now have tools to make better decisions earlier.

Scouts will have more to work with.

Players will understand their own bodies and tendencies in ways that used to take years to figure out, if ever.

For youth clubs and academies, that also means fewer vendors, lower costs, and access to the same quality of data as the pros.

PlayerData isn't just building a product.

They're building the infrastructure that powers the next generation of sports performance.

• Miami Marlins Sell 15% Stake. Miami Marlins owner Bruce Sherman has sold 15% of the team to 2 unidentified families with residences in South Florida. The deal, first reported by Sportico, brings the team’s ownership group to 15. The capital will help pay off a portion of the debt payment and also give the team more money for the salary cap and floor in 2027. The sale values the Marlins at about $1.55 billion. Sherman bought the team in 2017 for $1.2 billion and will remain in control of the organization (more here).

• Bolt Ventures Invests In Just Women’s Sports. Just Women's Sports (JWS), a women's sports media company founded by Haley Rosen, has closed a new seven-figure investment round led by Bolt Ventures, the family office of sports investor David Blitzer. Other participants include Starry Eyed Tomorrow, the family office of Gotham FC part-owners Bobby and HyeMi Cho, as well as Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Blue Pool Capital, and OVO Fund, all of which are returning investors. The funding will go toward expanding JWS's news and content operations, growing its team, and investing in athlete-led programming (more here).

• SportAI Acquires Padelytics. SportAI, an Oslo-based AI-powered racquet sports analysis platform, has acquired Padelytics, an AI-powered platform that transforms padel court video footage into engaging insights. The move unites two of the most prominent AI teams operating within the racquet sports industry. As part of the integration, Padelytics CEO and co-founder Nenad Zivic will transition to the role of chief product and technology officer (CPTO) at SportAI. Financial details were not disclosed (more here).

• Soon-Shiong Acquires LA-Based Pro Volleyball Team. Billionaire entrepreneur, Los Angeles Times owner, and minority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, has acquired a new Major League Volleyball (MLV) expansion franchise in Los Angeles, which is set to debut in the 2027 season. He is joined in the ownership group by investor Ben Priest, who will serve as the team's governor and managing partner. Financial details were not disclosed, though franchise rights are estimated at between $15 million and $20 million (more here).

• Athvance Sports Acquires Stake In Levels Fight League. Athvance Capital, a European investment platform dedicated to building scaled sports assets across intellectual property, technology, and services, announced the acquisition of a significant stake in Levels Fight League (LFL), one of the fastest-growing MMA organizations in the Benelux region. Founded by former professional MMA fighter Donovan Panayiotis and co-founder Bart Deuss, LFL has rapidly established itself as a proving ground for elite MMA talent, with several fighters graduating from LFL to compete at the highest levels of the sport, including the UFC. Financial details were not disclosed (more here).

• Senda Athletics Raises $1.5M. Senda Athletics, a Miami-based soccer apparel company, has raised $1.5 million in Seed funding to launch what it says are the world's first Fair Trade Certified soccer cleats. The round includes investments from Washington Spirit owner Michele Kang, Racing Louisville owner John Neace, and entrepreneur Marc Effron. The funding will go toward marketing, staffing, R&D, inventory, and expansion (more here).

Quick update before you keep reading…

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Now, back to your regularly scheduled newsletter.

• CBS & WSL Announce Partnership. CBS Sports has announced a partnership with the Women’s Super League (WSL) for the US broadcast rights. The four-year deal will see 183 matches streamed live on Paramount+, with one game a week airing on the CBS Sports Network linear channel. Selected matches will also be streamed on the CBS Sports Golazo Network free ad-supported television (FAST) service. Live coverage will be complemented by studio and magazine programming, as well as a range of social, digital, and audio content (more here).

• MLS & World Wide Technology Announce Partnership. MLS has announced a new partnership with global tech consulting and integration company World Wide Technology (WWT). Under the partnership, WWT becomes the league’s official technology solutions partner, with the goal of the partnership to “establish more individualized relationships through data and AI-driven personalization.” WWT will give MLS access to its Advanced Technology Center and AI Proving Ground to build, test, and scale AI-related technologies that will help it understand fan behavior, automate workflows, and personalize content around clubs, players, matchups, and highlights (more here).

• UEFA & Alibaba Announce Partnership. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group has struck a significant commercial deal with European soccer's governing body UEFA. Through a multi-year collaboration, Alibaba becomes the global AI, cloud computing, and e-commerce partner for both the 2028 UEFA European Championships national teams competition and the various UEFA men's club competitions for the 2027-33 seasons. The latter element of the overall deal covers the top-tier UEFA Champions League, the second-tier Europa League, the third-tier Conference League, and the annual UEFA Super Cup (more here).

• Travis Kelce Invests In MLB Team. Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has acquired a minority stake in his hometown MLB team, the Cleveland Guardians. Kelce joins other current athletes who have become minority investors in MLB teams, including LeBron James (Boston Red Sox), Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee Brewers), Cade Cunningham (Texas Rangers), and Kelce’s teammate, Patrick Mahomes (Kansas City Royals). Financial details were not disclosed, though the team is valued at around $1.7 billion (more here).

• Luka Dončić Invests In Italian Serie A Team. Los Angeles Lakers star Luka Dončić is teaming up with former Dallas Mavericks executive Donnie Nelson to bring basketball to Rome. Nelson is the lead investor and managing partner of a group that purchased the professional basketball club Vanoli Cremona in Italy's Lega Basket Serie A. The ownership group, which also includes longtime coach Valerio Bianchini and former player Rimantas Kaukėnas, announced that the club will be relocated to Rome as part of the transaction and will begin play there at the start of the 2026-27 season. The group also announced that it has submitted a bid for the team to be Rome's representative for NBA Europe (more here).

• Sevilla FC Deal With Sergio Ramos Fall Through. Sevilla FC has reportedly ended negotiations with Spanish football star Sergio Ramos and his investment group following a dramatic shift in their proposal. Two weeks ago, a letter of intent was signed for a massive €440 million takeover. This initial agreement included €80 million for a capital increase, €290 million for shareholders, and the remaining funds allocated to clear the club's estimated net debt. The new consortium presented radically different terms, cutting the valuation in half to a €220 million (more here).

• CNBC's Official Global Soccer Team Valuations 2026. The world’s 30 most valuable soccer teams are worth an average of $2.66 billion, according to CNBC’s Official Global Soccer Team Valuations 2026, released this week. This number puts soccer’s average team value behind that of the NFL, whose average team is worth $7.65 billion, the NBA, at an average of $5.52 billion, and MLB, at $2.95 billion, and puts it ahead of the NHL at $2.2 billion, according to CNBC’s official team valuations (more here).