Weekly Roundup: Business of Athletes, Sports, & NIL (October 2-8)

Audio Timeline:

1:20 - Feel good stories

* Joe Burrow is giving back in a big way and the cool story of a seventeen-year-old raising money for cancer.

3:20 - Business of Athletes

* Spanish athletes Pau Gasol, Rudy Fernandez, and Iker Casillas are investing in INDYA, a startup focused on improving the performance of athletes through technology and nutrition.

* Annika Sörenstam and Vijay Singh (retired pro golfers) are investors in wearable golf technology deWiz’s $4M Series B round.

6:00 - Name, Image, and Likeness

* SAXX underwear signs South Carolina football players to one of the most creative NIL deals we’ve seen up until this point.

* Mississippi State HC Mike Leach says players should be split between amateurs and professionals.

* An array of other cool deals — from Reese’s to a dog.

11:55 - Future of Sports

* onX announced an $87.4M Series B round to continue building their navigation and mapping technology for outdoor recreationists.

* Verse Gaming, a social gaming company hosting peer-2-peer fantasy contests in sports announced a pre-seed funding round of $585k.

* GAMURS, a leading esports and entertainment media network, announced it has closed a $12M Series A funding round co-led by Elysian Park and Cerro Capital.

* PredictionStrike, a marketplace for trading shares of athletes, announced a $3M seed round led by MaC Venture Capital.

* Basketball analytics startup ShotQuality has raised a $3.2M seed round co-led by KB Partners and TIA Ventures.

Interesting Stat

This is pretty wild:

Sports Sponsorship spending (in billions) from 2014-2024.

This is going to continue increasing, especially since the target market has increased now that college and high school sports are monetizable through name, image, and likeness (NIL).

Short Passage of The Week:

Brick by Brick, Day by Day 

* Culture isn’t built in a day. 

* Success isn’t built in a day. 

* Mindset isn’t built in a day. 

* Habits aren’t built in a day. 

* Greatness isn’t built in a day. 

* The foundation isn’t built in a day. 

It’s built one day at a time. Keep showing up. Keep doing the work. Passage by Kevin DeShazo

Tweet(s)

Former MLB pitcher Jacob Turner put out an interesting thread regarding playoff baseball bonuses.

Sports = Business. Business = Money.

Therefore…

Sports = Money (never forget that).

Business Jargon

Let’s take a look at some of the unique ways to fund a startup.

Bootstrapping:

This is when startup founders invest their own money or get friends and family to invest in the business.

Bootstrapping gives business owners more room to experiment with the business and product since there’s no pressure to meet the expectations of investors.

Equity:

Refers to the percentage of ownership in a business.

VCs typically make investments in exchange for equity, a percentage of the company’s shares.

Crowdfunding:

Financing method where a group of individuals invests in your business. To run a successful crowdfunding campaign, you need to showcase your project to a large audience to convince them to invest.

Depending on the type of crowdfunding, investors may receive shares, interest, or products or services for their investment.

Quote

“If you feel like there’s something out there that you’re supposed to be doing, if you have a passio