USTA Ventures, the U.S. Tennis Association’s strategic investment arm, has made an undisclosed investment in Fastbreak AI and committed to using its machine learning-powered sports scheduling engine for USTA League recreational matches. The deployment will begin on a pilot basis this year before rolling out widely in 2027.
Michael Hughes, the USTA’s Senior Dir of Digital Strategy & Business Development, told SBJ the USTA selected Fastbreak after a request-for-proposals process intended to address a pain point -- scheduling USTA League matches across the governing body’s 17 sections -- that causes “tremendous operational overhead.”
“There are about 350,000 dual [team vs. team] matches every year of USTA League. It’s scheduling 2 million court hours against thousands of different facilities,” Hughes explained of the process, which had previously been done manually.
Hughes said he was introduced to Fastbreak through its participation in the NBA Launchpad accelerator (which he and the USTA keep tabs on) and an existing relationship with Fastbreak Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Chris Groer, who was a professional tennis player. Fastbreak’s work across more than 60 pro leagues (e.g., NBA, NHL, MLS) stood out, as did its expansion into youth sports through the launch of its youth sports operations platform, Fastbreak Compete.
Fastbreak co-founder & CEO John Stewart said Fastbreak’s product management team will meet with leadership from the USTA and its sections to establish the requirements under which it will build the organization a “bespoke wrapper” around its core scheduling technology.
“The objective is to give them something that is effective, easy to use, easy to manage,” Stewart said, adding that this will be the largest-scale deployment Fastbreak has undertaken since being founded in 2022.
This is the fourth investment made by USTA Ventures since the fund launched in 2023, joining electronic line-calling vendor PlayReplay (which now provides ELC technology for all hard-court USTA Pro Circuit tournaments), tennis facility operator Court 16 and audio innovation startup Edge Sound Research. Typically, these are small, minority investments focused on establishing strategic alignment with new technology partners that the USTA sees as augmentative to its mission to grow the sport of tennis.
Looking ahead, Hughes said the fund is eyeing potential investment opportunities in the realm of athlete performance.
“We’re looking for more deal flow that fits our thesis,” he said. “That athlete performance space is one that keeps pinging and pinging and pinging.”
Fastbreak AI’s scheduling platform is a finalist for the “Best in AI” category at the 2026 Sports Business Awards: Tech.
