How The Recent Economic Shock Impacts Innovation Within Sports

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Friends,

Will Ventures, an early-stage fund investing at the intersection of sports and technology, officially announced the launch of their inaugural $55M venture capital fund yesterday.

Founded by two former Harvard football players, Isaiah Kacyvenski and Brian Kelly, Will Ventures is betting that sports will lead “the next great wave of technological innovation, whether that’s in consumer, tech or media.”

The initial $55M fund includes capital from two “large” university endowments and eight team owners across the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and MLS (Source).

So far, Will Ventures has already deployed about $13M across ten early stage companies in esports, connected fitness, skill-based gaming, health and wellness, and telepath.

Investments include (Source):

• Armored Things - A crowd intelligence platform providing a heat map of people and movement in your venue or campus.

• Breathwrk - Offers guided breath work using the same exercises used by Navy SEALs, psychologists, high performance athletes and yoga practitioners to help reduce anxiety, improve endurance, increase energy and improve sleep.

• Custom Club - Provides new, custom-fitting retainers and mouthguard directly to customers by mail.

• Liteboxer - An at-home fitness company that creates unforgettable workout experiences by leveraging proprietary rhythmic technology and top fitness trainers.

• Other investments: Fitbiomics, JockMKT, Player’s Health, Playfull, Rewind and Rupie.

(Source / Forbes)

Now that we’ve covered the exciting news of Will Ventures, let’s play a game.

What do Disney, Airbnb, FedEx, Microsoft and Uber all have in common?

They were started during a recession.

Whether you have been impacted personally through health, career, family, or financially, the pandemic has been extremely hard on most of us. But when you look throughout history, these type of systematic economic shocks typically have led to prolonged periods of innovation. Regardless of if we believe it or not, this time will be no different.

In terms of sports specifically, here are a couple areas I’m excited about.

Event Management

There are some people that believe live events will never return to the structure that preceded this pandemic — I’m not one of them. Whether it’s a sporting event or a concert, people have enjoyed live events for hundreds of years — that won’t change. More so, I believe the pandemic will simply accelerate trends that were already occurring within the event management space.

Take Clear for example — the biometric identity platform that enables a safer, speedy & secure check-in experience was already in place at certain venues, but will certainly have an expanded presence as we return to normalcy.

The same can be said for other infrastructure within the event management space, like mobile ticketing, in-stadium food delivery, contactless payments, geo-tracing applications and more.

Those things might seem obvious to you, but the range of opportunity is wide and vast.

For instance, there have been virtual concerts occurring throughout the pandemic, allowing individuals to watch their favorite artist live from the comfort of their couch.

Will this optionality co-exist within the live event ecosystem going forward?

I think so.

Digital Fitness

I’ve spoken about it in the past, and I’ll continue to talk about it in the future — Digital Fitness is only going to get bigger.

My bullish belief on the potential $100 billon global industry is rather simple in nature.

Technological innovations of the past 20+ years have continued to rapidly decrease the amount of desired human interaction and contact within society — think social media, mobile, etc. This will only accelerate post-pandemic, as individuals become even less comfortable than before.

Not to mention, we’ve already been seeing a paradigm shift occurring within the fitness industry for years.

Examples include:

• Peloton - Has 3M+ subscribers and announced over $600M in revenue last quarter, with a reported profit of $89.1M — compared to a loss of $47M one-year prior.

• Zwift - Has over 2.5 million registered accounts across 190 countries and announced a $450M Series C round in September.

• Tonal - Raised an additional $110M last month to facilitate a 10x increase in sales year over year. New investors include Steph Curry, Paul George, Michelle Wie and the Amazon Alexa Fund.

• Mirror - After investing in prior rounds, Lululemon acquired the growing in-home fitness company in June for $500M.

But hasn’t the space become crowded enough?

Maybe, but competition breeds innovation, which will only be positive for consumers in the end. I expect the market to consolidate over time, with more niche, digitally native products popping up.

Ultimately, whether it’s event management, digital fitness, or any other category, don’t bet against technologies ability to accelerate the pace of post-pandemic innovation.

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