On a clear, 72-degree Los Angeles evening back in November 2015, 10 entrepreneurs each stepped onto a stage near the mound at Dodgers Stadium to pitch their visions for the future of sports technology.
Mobile, social, and digital revolutions had reshaped the world, but sports were still due for an upgrade. In 2015, the Dodgers and brand development firm R/GA launched an accelerator program to identify innovative companies ready to upend the game.
Team owners wanted to invest in companies changing the way fans watched sports, the way athletes participated in sports, “and even, to some extent,” says Cole Van Nice, a managing partner of the program, “the way we define sports.” Then-Dodgers CFO Tucker Kain had expected a few dozen applications for the first cohort. Instead, the team got more than 600.
The 10 founders ultimately selected for the program still knew their odds of success remained small. About 75% of venture-backed startups fail, and the ones that do turn a profit can require a decade of pivots to get there.
Two of those entrepreneurs would go on to sell their companies for roughly $500 million combined. Two more accelerator companies would be gone by the end of 2017.
As it turned out, similar paths awaited sports tech-focused accelerators themselves. Mixing the stability of teams’ established businesses with the volatility of tech moonshots proved high-risk. Misses were inevitable.
The Team Accelerator Era
At first, the Dodgers model appeared prime to proliferate. In the late 2010s, every pro sports team seemed to be launching—or at least considering—an accelerator program of their own. There was the 76ers Innovation Lab in Philadelphia, a Cowboys-connected Blue Star Accelerator in Dallas, the Thunder Launchpad in OKC, and separate projects led by the Minnesota Vikings and Minnesota Twins, among others.
They generally promised similar benefits: advice from industry leaders, the opportunity to run pilot programs at large scales, investment, office space, and—maybe most important—a valuable stamp of approval.
In return, sports properties could test potentially game-changing innovations and see a piece of the long-term profits from businesses that often needed team access or intellectual property to get off the ground.
But the programs quickly encountered challenges. Scouting, recruiting and shepherding startups through the process sometimes cost $1 million per year, on top of any investments made in the companies. Relocating promising projects to team headquarters proved difficult and distracting. Ultimately, there just weren’t enough compelling companies to fill out the slots.
The economics of professional sports became increasingly attractive through the 2010s as media rights revenues exploded, attendance grew and new-age owners found additional lines of cash from new sponsors and real estate plays. But just because America could support 100+ major teams didn’t mean it could fill that many innovation labs with promising sports startups.
“At one point, I was worried that, how many accelerator programs are we going to see?” said Courtside Ventures partner Vasu Kulkarni. “You can’t have 20 accelerator programs for sports. … You’re going to have really bad companies.”
There were some success stories. From that first Dodgers accelerator class, point-of-sale tech developer Appetize went on to sell for more than $400 million while health data platform Kinduct reportedly exited for more than $70 million. LeagueApps and Swish Analytics went on to raise millions themselves.
Another handful of participants in that program and its antecedents have raised more than $10 million each and/or developed profitable business models. Sixers Innovation Lab alum U.GG sold for $45 million in 2021. Dodgers accelerator product Keemotion and Sixers Innovation Lab portfolio company Lowkey were also acquired for undisclosed sums in recent years. Other Dodgers finds Greenfly, ShotTracker and WSC have become relatively large players in the sports tech scene.
But overall, “in terms of exits,” Van Nice said, “that is taking longer than I think anyone really expected.”
The time, the investment, and the risk required to run the team-based sports tech accelerator programs ultimately weren’t deemed worthwhile in most cases. Accelerators shifted their priorities or disappeared completely. The Twins Accelerator is gone in favor of a to-be-announced new model. The 76ers Innovation Lab closed, as its managing director took over a new VC fund. Several other projects never even got off the ground after stakeholders learned what would be required. The era of the team-based, cohort-style sports tech accelerator is all but over.
And yet, investment in sports tech has only grown. Global analysis firm SportsTechX measured less than $1 billion invested across the industry in 2014. Now it estimates there was nearly $10 billion in deal flow in 2024, including the creation of nine new sports tech unicorns.
A New Model
“We’ve definitely gone through a lot of iterations here,” Van Nice said, before counting the pivots. “We’ve actually been through five.”
Elysian Park, the investment firm created by Dodgers’ ownership, shrunk the accelerator class size to five in year two, focusing on specific pilot programs. It brought in other sports brands to collaborate and spun up a new program dedicated to women’s sports companies. Rather than a time and cohort-based setup, Van Nice, along with his three partners, now oversees a holding company that invests in startups and growth companies on a rolling basis, with an affiliated product development and brand marketing initiative to help portfolio companies.
Elysian’s model follows the wider tech trend of venture studios, which spin up companies from scratch rather than attracting existing outfits.
Like other team owners, Dodgers leadership is also now eyeing what it calls the “sports plus” category. Having started by primarily identifying products that organizations like the Dodgers could use, investors now take a broader look at areas across culture and health where sports IP can contribute to consumer market success.
An AI translation company, for example, might show its bona fides by expanding sports broadcasts before transitioning to call centers, or a security product could be proven in stadiums before being offered to airports.
“Even for an enterprise-level application, sports has started to become a net exporter of technology,” said Drive by Draftkings CEO and managing partner Meredith McPherron.
From the get-go, TitletownTech, co-founded by the Green Bay Packers and Microsoft in 2017, has courted companies beyond those with obvious sports applications. One of its most recent investments was in fusion energy developer Realta, which is still years away from a prototype. TitletownTech also eschewed the accelerator model in favor of investing in companies around the world and inviting founders to take up residence in its Lombardi Ave. facility, all while maintaining a focus on local financial impact.
“I always see in publications, people talking about ‘31 owners and the Green Bay Packers,’” TitletownTech managing director Craig Dickman said. “We kind of think about this space somewhat similarly. It’s, you know, 31 organizations doing things, and then the Green Bay Packers.”
Meanwhile, companies specifically seeking teams as clients have new league-run programs to participate in.
Beyond Unicorns
The NBA Launchpad, established in 2021, and the MLS Innovation Lab, opened in January 2024, were both created primarily to ensure the leagues themselves kept up with the times, though they still do generally take equity in the young companies.
“We don’t do this to have these big unicorn outcomes,” NBA VP of strategy Tom Ryan said, noting that Launchpad started with specific problems in mind, such as equipping officials or enhancing player performance.
“If we can improve ankle health by 2%, that has a big impact on our business,” Ryan added.
The focus on impact has largely drawn similar programs to later-stage companies that are further along in their development. In those cases, financial upside is traded for the chance of implementing tech faster.
“I think any league that isn’t playing in this space is missing a chance to manage and control their destiny,” MLS SVP for emerging ventures Chris Schlosser said.
The Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech accelerator (or “innovation platform” as it’s referred to internally), working with Boomtown, has brought in partners including Notre Dame, the Premier League, the PGA Tour and multiple Olympic sports organizations since its start in 2020, with the promise that the program will specifically source companies that fit the needs of the consortium members.
At launch the program took a 6% stake in participants’ companies, typical for an accelerator, but that requirement has been dropped as Comcast considers companies beyond the Series A stage (it still invests $50,000 per startup). It also lengthened its commitment from 12 weeks to six months to facilitate tech implementations.
Tim Brownstone, the founder of smart clothes company Kymira, which infuses infrared technology in otherwise unassuming garments to improve performance and recovery, said sports offered a market to commercialize early before expanding to the more regulated medical world. Kymira, founded in 2013, considered other accelerators, but SportsTech was the first one it joined because it was commercially oriented rather than focused on investment.
“Our involvement probably 5x’d the deal value this year that we received from the (Philadelphia) Flyers,” Brownstone said. The company is also growing in the corporate health market with goals to equip Comcast retail employees.
Starting Small—Again
For younger startups, there are still opportunities to focus on product development and garner early investment.
A decade ago, traditional VCs consistently rejected Van Nice’s vision. “We heard the refrain all the time of, Show me the money. Show me the returns. Show me the exits,” Van Nice said. “And they weren’t wrong, it wasn’t really a market yet. It wasn’t a thing.”
It is now.
According to sports tech entrepreneur Chris Buckner, there are now nearly 150 venture capital funds active in the sports market.
2024 startups admitted to the competitive Y Combinator program, which draws from the entire tech industry, include a front office software suite for college sports and multiple betting-related projects. In March, Plug and Play accepted the first cohort in a new, Frisco-based sports tech program. Lead One has attracted FC Cincinnati and the Orlando Magic to its new pre-seed fund, which replaced a Florida-based accelerator program.
Global startup accelerator Techstars meanwhile launched a sports-focused track in Indianapolis, partnering with the NCAA, Pacers, Colts and others in 2019. The program has already seen three alumni companies acquired, with at least one other raising money at a valuation of $200 million. Getting startups to relocate to Indiana was a challenge at first, Techstars Sports Accelerator managing director Jordan Fliegel said, but building a large network of investors and advisors has made the program attractive to top founders.
“It’s hard to do an accelerator,” Fliegel said, especially for a team to run one themselves without tech experience and connections. “I think the consortium model makes sense.”
Last week the 2024 Techstars sports cohort gathered for a demo day not unlike the one LA hosted nearly a decade ago. In fact, the two programs share DNA.
In 2015, chiropractor Travis McDonough participated in the Dodgers accelerator as he built Kinduct. The company was acquired in 2020, reportedly for the largest ever exit price of a Canadian sports tech company.
Now McDonough is back, getting into Techstars with digital wellness platform Wellnify.ai.
“This whole … sports innovation industry that we talk about just went through its first cycle, its first 10-year cycle,” Van Nice said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of consolidation happening soon, but I think there’s also about to be a new wave of really interesting young companies coming out.”
It remains to be seen how exactly sports properties will engage with that incoming generation. Techstars Sports operated under a one-year deal this year, creating some uncertainty for the future.
But for startups, that’s nothing new. To them, it looks like opportunity.
(This has been updated to include information on the Comcast NBCUniversal’s SportsTech accelerator’s work with Boomtown.)
