The NFL will launch an NFT helmet collection licensed by all 32 teams on Aug. 30 as part of its new NFL Rivals blockchain fantasy football game developed by Mythical Games. The collection will span 2,500 one-of-one animated helmets for each of the 32 NFL teams.
Each NFT helmet will be sold on RarityLeague.com for 0.14 Ethereum, which currently equals about $216 USD. The inaugural drop on Aug. 30 will feature helmets from the Bengals and Rams and the collectibles will also be available on NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea and Rarible.
Fans who buy Rarity League NFTs will get rewards such as NFL Rivals player NFTs to use in fantasy contests and access to in-game currency and exclusive in-game tournaments. Mythical Games announced its deal in May with the NFL and NFLPA to make NFL Rivals. The NFL’s other NFT excursions include its non-fungible commemorative tickets with Ticketmaster, DraftKings NFT Reignmakers fantasy football, and its NFL All Day marketplace with Dapper Labs.
Pixellot will expand its automated sports video production technology across Canada through its new deal with HomeTeam Live, a streaming app for youth and professional sports competitions in Canada. HomeTeam expects to install Pixellot’s computer vision cameras in 150 Canadian venues by the end of this year.
Among the leagues to livestream games on HomeTeam’s subscription platform include the Western Canadian Baseball League, League1 British Columbia soccer, Saskatchewan Premier Baseball League, and the national Canadian Junior Little League Championship. Over the next year and a half, Pixellot and HomeTeam believe they have potential to expand into 1,400 venues in Canada.
Israel-headquartered Pixellot raised $161 million at a $500 million valuation earlier this year. The company’s unmanned cameras that automatically follow ball and player movement produce more than 150,000 games per month globally through partners such as the NBA, MLB, FC Barcelona, Bundesliga, Genius Sports, LigaMX and the National Federation of State High School Associations.
Beckett Collectibles, best known for its print pricing guide for American sports cards, has created the Beckett Vault, a safehouse for collectibles that includes instant digital viewing access.
The Beckett Vault is part of the company’s new 100,000-square-foot facility in Plano, Texas. The room is guarded with biometric access control and maintains water- and fire-proof protection, climate-controlled settings and 24/7 security monitoring.
The initial threshold is that Beckett will consider items valued at $750 and higher. Every item going to a digital studio for high-resolution photos prior to storage; that will enable owners to show their items on their smartphones. Visits to the Vault can be arranged with the concierge service.
Beckett intends to incorporate Vault items into its digital marketplace, with users able to buy and sell items with the ownership title transferred from one person to the next via blockchain. Collectors can submit to have their items stored there, which will be free at launch; Beckett will charge a 5% handling fee for items that are sold.
The German Football Association will implement TrackMan’s ball flight technology throughout all levels of its academy as part of a continued initiative to develop players.
Known overseas as the DFB-Akademie, the organization had earlier vetted TrackMan’s ball-striking metrics with its men’s senior national team and saw rapid improvement in the squad’s ball delivery skills during practices. Through its optically-enhanced radar technology, TrackMan has been able to calculate real-time spin axis, spin rate, launch angle, flight time and speed of a soccer ball—something it had previously only measured across golf and baseball.
The company has coupled that data with analytics such as wall height, goalkeeper coverage and scoring opportunity to help the men’s senior national team improve performance. As recently as last February, TrackMan had introduced the same soccer ball flight technology product to the Danish Superliga club FC Midtjylland for insights on other aspects of the game, such as free kicks and penalties. TrackMan’s devices work in tandem with cameras for auto-synchronization and video tied to data and has deployed the technology on NFL field goals, as well.
Sports data provider Genius Sports has struck a deal to oversee Bally Interactive’s sports betting, iGaming and daily fantasy platforms.
Through the partnership, Genius will leverage its proprietary analytics and livestreams to help Bally’s grow its brands, particularly its online sportsbook Bally Bet. As part of the agreement, Bally’s will also benefit from Genius’ exclusive data rights deals with the NFL, English Premier League, NASCAR, CFL, Liga MX and Argentine and Colombian soccer. For instance, Bally’s Interactive will be able to make use of Genius’ access to the NFL’s real-time statistic platform, Next Gen Stats.
The two companies will also collaborate on livestreams to enhance the Bally’s betting experience for soccer matches in Argentina, Colombia, Iceland and China, not to mention FIBA basketball games and FIVB volleyball contests. Genius has previously helped the NBA, the American Hockey League and the Drone Racing League with betting solutions.
The deal comes a week after Bally Sports regional networks announced the impending launch of its subscription streaming service, Bally Sports+, available on September 26 ahead of the NBA and NHL seasons.
Video surveillance firm Axis Communications has broadened its security partnership with the Little League World Series to deploy multi-sensor cameras at this year’s tournament for the first time. The cameras are installed at Howard J. Lamade Stadium and Volunteer Stadium, the two venues in Williamsport, PA that host the LLWS.
Sweden-based Axis Communications is its 12th year of supplying its security cameras and surveillance network to the annual youth baseball tournament, which is currently being played through Aug. 28. The new multi-sensor cameras come as this year’s LLWS expanded its field by four teams to 20 total participants, increasing the need for added security measures to protect fans, players, coaches and staff.
Axis’s array of surveillance cameras at the LLWS also includes thermal, panoramic, PTZ, fixed box, and fixed dome network cameras. The company is owned by Japanese camera and electronics giant Canon.
Bally Sports+, the subscription streaming service that launched regionally in June, will become available to all its markets beginning on September 26 in time for the 2022-23 NBA and NHL seasons. According to The Athletic, however, subscribers have been slow to sign up for the new service.
Those who live in any of the 19 markets served by Bally Sports now can choose to subscribe to the direct-to-consumer service instead of a cable or streaming bundle to watch the local RSN. Bally Sports+ began distribution in five regions over the summer—Detroit, Kansas City, Miami, Tampa and Wisconsin—at a price point of $19.99 per month or $189.99 per year.
In those five launch markets, Bally Sports+ included the local rights to the appropriate hometown MLB club, but that will not be the case initially for the other markets. Other regional programming, such as college and high school sports, will be included.
Sinclair Broadcast Group, which introduced virtual control rooms last summer, acquired what used to be the collection of Fox Sports RSNs in 2019 and then rebranded them as Bally Sports in partnership with the casino and sportsbook operator. A subsidiary of Sinclair, Diamond Sports Group, is the operator of the Bally Sports+.
“We view Bally Sports+ as a great complement to the incredible value our distribution partners provide our linear networks; and with both models, we are uniquely positioned to help our team partners grow their fan bases for years to come,” Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO Chris Ripley said in a statement.
A day after revealing that Amazon will begin selling its products, Peloton reported a quarterly loss of $1.24 billon and saw its share price drop over 19% on Thursday morning.
It was the connected-fitness company’s sixth straight quarterly loss, which financial experts attribute to consumers going back to office environments and forsaking in-home workout equipment.
Peloton’s quarterly performance, as of June 30, was four-times worse than its $313 million loss at this same time last year. Quarterly revenue also dipped from last year, falling 28% to $679 million. Barry McCarthy, who took over as CEO this past February, said Peloton’s restructuring costs that totaled $415 million this past quarter likely caused the company’s continued downturn.
Earlier this month, Peloton laid off roughly 780 employees, mostly members of its delivery workforce, and also made plans to shutter most of its 86 retail stores beginning in 2023. It also increased prices on its Bike+ by $500 to $2,495 and on its Tread product by $800 to $3,495.
“The naysayers will look at our financial performance and see a melting pot of declining revenue, negative gross margin and deeper operating losses,” McCarthy told company shareholders in a memo. “But what I see is significant progress driving our comeback and Peloton’s long-term resilience. We still have work to do.”
Rapsodo, the ball flight tracking tech company, has launched its first solution for live, in-game baseball and softball data and announced that it will be the exclusive provider of such data for the American Association of Professional Baseball, an MLB partner league, for three years.
The latest innovation is Rapsodo Stadium, which utilizes two dual-stereo camera systems across the field to capture full ball trajectory and its 3D rotations for assessing details such as seam orientation. This is the company’s first product that non-invasively collects game data with a purely optical tracking solution on a scale similar to YakkerTech and much lighter than the enterprise Hawk-Eye option that MLB uses for Statcast.
Previous iterations of Rapsodo technology focused on training data, with the first and second versions of the technology requiring separate hitting and pitching monitors. Version 3.0, which will now be used by Trajekt Sports as well, solved for that by combining those into one device, but its placement was still on the field between the batter and pitcher. Rapsodo Stadium does not need to placed on the field of play.
Rapsodo Stadium can also be used to record play-by-play data so that actions and outcomes can be paired. The AAPB had already been using Rapsodo 2.0 pitching and hitting units during the past year, a time frame that saw almost 100 players received contracts from MLB organizations.
The AAPB is the first to commit to league-wide installation of Rapsodo Stadium, with work already completed at the home venues for the Milwaukee Milkmen and Lincoln Saltdogs, with the other 10 members putting in the technology this fall. Four MLB-affiliated facilities also have installed Rapsodo Stadium.
HEIR, the Web3 fan token platform that has previously attracted NBA players, is hosting an immersive high school event in September that will include 18 of the top prep stars in the country playing in a full-court 2 on 2 tournament.
Called NFT JAM—and based on the popular NBA Jam video game that debuted in 1993—the 2 on 2 games will be played on a condensed court in Atlanta with four 3-minute quarters. On the weekend of Sept. 9 and 10, the high school players will also partake in in “Web23 House,’’ where they will be educated and onboarded with Web3 experiences. The 18 players will also become HEIR brand ambassadors through individual NIL deals, and fans will be able to unlock rewards and digital collectibles at the NFT JAM tournament.
Baylor commit Ja’Kobe Walter, Arkansas commit Layden Blocker and LSU commit Corey Chest are among the elite high school players scheduled to attend HEIR’S NFT Jam. The company, co-founded by Michael Jordan’s son Jeffrey, has already partnered with NBA players Lonzo Ball of the Chicago Bulls, Bennedict Mathurin of the Indiana Pacers and Anthony “Ant-Man’’ Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Heir launched in December of 2021 after Jeffrey Jordan received $10 million in seed funding. Ball has since released NFTs in conjunction with streetwear designer Don C and Web3 lifestyle developers Okay Bears.
Coaches affiliated with USA Weightlifting can now offer training programming through TrueCoach, a personal training software that has become the official coaching app of the national governing body. The new deal also enables Team USA weightlifters to access on-demand video workouts through TrueCoach, which can also be used to schedule in-person workouts with personal trainers.
TrueCoach offers an app for gyms and personal trainers looking to streamline operations and meet potential clients, and a mobile app for customers looking to access workout videos. All coaches who complete their Level 1 or Level 2 certification from USA Weightlifting will now gain three months of preferred access to host classes on TrueCoach, and all TrueCoach users can access movement educations videos from USA Weightlifting.
More than 17,000 personal trainers and fitness organizations use TrueCoach, which facilitates payments and real-time messaging and lets trainers build workout routines for clients through its exercise video library. The app is owned by Xplor Technologies, whose software products for gyms and health clubs also include Mariana Tek, Xplor Gym, Xplor Recreation, and Xplor Studio.
Author
Administraroot
