Monday, July 15, 2019 – A roundup of some of the key sports technology stories you need to know, including SportTechie’s own content and stories from around the web
- Illegal EPL streaming generates $1.3 million per game in sponsorship value for brands, according to a study conducted by sponsorship valuation firm GumGum Sports and anti-piracy company MUSO, in partnership with an unnamed Premier League club. The report considered a sample of eight matches and found each was streamed illegally by an average of 7.1 million fans. “Piracy audiences have too long been disregarded as offering no real value to rights holders and distributors, but the reality is that these huge audiences still see the same shirt sponsors and commercials as people watching the game via a licensed channel,” Andy Chatterley, MUSO co-founder and CEO, said in a press release.
- The NFL missed the chance to opt-out of its current NFL Sunday Ticket deal with AT&T, according to The Athletic. In 2014, the NFL inked an eight-year, $12 billion deal with DirecTV that contained an option to allow either side to end the agreement a year early. The league was rumored to be interested in expanding its Sunday Ticket offering to include a digital streaming partner. But the NFL missed the deadline to exit the current deal, and now the NFL Sunday Ticket package will remain on DirecTV until the end of the 2020 season.
- STATS and Perform have finalized their merger to create a new sports data analysis firm, Stats Perform. DAZN Group, which previously owned Perform, will receive a minority stake in the new company. According to Stats Perform, it will provide data to four of the top five most popular global sports broadcasters, seven of the top 10 global tech companies, all of the top 10 sportsbooks, and seven of the top 10 soccer franchises. “The combination of Stats Perform will give us greater ability to extract new insights and context,” says Carl Mergele, CEO of Stats Perform.
NHL’s THEO FLEURY: ‘I’m involved in the biggest epidemic on the planet.’
- DraftKings has partnered with travel site Hotwire to launch a new fantasy baseball game called the Hotwire Effect Series. The game will highlight the growing reliance of analytics in MLB: users will draft their teams only from stats—player names will be hidden throughout the selection process. Once each game begins, users will have the names of their selected players revealed to them. The Hotwire Effect Series has a $20,000 total prize pool and will offer $5,000 in winnings per weekly contest.
- The North American League of Legends Championship Series has signed a co-streaming deal with social broadcasting platform Caffeine. Fans will be able to watch and host their own streams of LCS matches every weekend for the remainder of the 2019 Summer Split regular season, playoffs and finals. Fox invested $100 million in Caffeine last summer. The company has also received investment from The Walt Disney Company. “Our platform will deliver these matches with almost no latency, allowing fans to watch as if they were there, while also offering aspiring shoutcasters the ability to live host their own streams of the event and interact with fans in real time,” Caffeine Founder and CEO Ben Keighran said in a press release.
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