The PWHL Players Association has made a major hire, picking 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree Malaika Underwood as executive director. Her business leadership experience is significant (which includes stops at tech-heavy IMG and fitness tech startup Sandlot Technology), and her time as a high-level athlete -- a former collegiate volleyball player at UNC and USA Baseball women's national team captain -- should only help in representing players in the still-fledging league.
Read more from my SBJ colleague Alex Silverman here. - Ethan Joyce
In today's edition of Power Up:
- Tennis Australia announces first close for AO Ventures
- MVP Interactive gets two brand collabs CFP title game
- Catapult taps ANSRS for AI tools
AO Ventures completes first close of $30M
Tennis Australia recently announced the completion of its first close for AO Ventures, a fund dedicated to sports tech startups that are primarily at the seed or Series A phase. The close totaled $30 million USD.
The fund, which will begin announcing investments in Q1 of 2025, is now eyeing a wide net of opportunities, according to Tennis Australia’s Director/Innovation and AO Ventures General Partner Machar Reid, who said this close will enable investments across 20 businesses over about a four-year period.
“As long as there’s an application back to our world – across the community sports arm, the event arm, the high-performance arm, or even padel tennis now that we are the governing body for padel tennis in Australia – it’s something we’ll take a look at,” Reid told SBJ. “We’re in a really fortunate position where we’ve got a bunch of product subject matter experts across our business that can certainly assist with [due diligence] as we parse the globe for opportunities.”
Backers of AO Ventures include Australian investors Mark Nelson, John Wylie, Mark Healey, Ashok Jacob and Wollemi Capital Group, as well as Techstars co-founder Brad Feld and the Gnanalingam family, majority owner of EFL Championship club Queens Park Rangers.
In addition to AO Ventures, Tennis Australia pilots new technologies through its AO Startups program, and also has an in-house incubator called AO Labs, which has produced companies like Action Audio and concepts like the animated Australian Open match streams setting social media ablaze this month.
The governing body’s investment arm was initially branded Wildcard Ventures – SwingVision was a notable investment – that offered an investor syndicate opportunity to opt-in or out of investments on a case-by-case basis. AO Ventures is the next evolution, with investment decisions made at the fund level.
“We want to be open to all of the very best ideas and executions around the globe,” Reid said. “We’ve tried to be thoughtful about it, and around where we’re best placed to add value, but also benefit from that relationship with the broader tech ecosystem.”
MVP Interactive shows off mixed reality activations at CFP title game
Mixed reality marketing firm MVP Interactive had two branded deployments at Monday night’s College Football Playoff final. Both interactives were housed in the Playoff Fan Central space of the title-game venue, Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Fans were able to compete with fellow championship game attendees in the pair of gamified experiences:
- With Capital One, the company created the Ultimate Field Goal Kick Challenge, which mixed physical field-goal attempts with a reactive backdrop. MVP Interactive collaborated with rEvolution Marketing for the Capital One activation
- MVP Interactive worked with Modelo on the Quarterback Precision Challenge, where players threw miniature footballs to knock over digital Modelo beer bottles displayed on a screen. Marketing firm Cogent World helped with this Modelo experience.
In 2023, SBJ named MVP Interactive as a Power Player: Fan Experience Technology.
Catapult taps ANSRS for AI data management
Catapult has named automated football data management provider ANSRS a preferred partner, integrating its AI tools into the Thunder Cloud video platform used by more than 90% of NCAA Division I programs. It is said to be the first time that coaches will have simultaneous access to all the necessary video and data typically required for building scouting reports and game plans.
ANSRS streamlines coaches’ video breakdowns by auto-populating opponents’ tendencies, analytics and other datapoints, saving staffs 20-to-30 hours per week, according to CEO Tim Prukop.
“We help the coaches get their football answers faster,” Prukop said. “This is the next paradigm shift for coaches and how they go about doing their job.”
Founded by Jon Shalala -- a former graduate assistant and position coach at Tennessee, Mississippi State and Arkansas -- ANSRS sought to alleviate a common weekly pain point in elite football. Prukop and his business partner, Randy Eccker, are former college football and basketball coaches who acquired the technology and are now running the company, along with Shalala remaining as Chief Product Officer.
“He really built ANSRS as a complement to Catapult to make it easier for coaches to use,” said Prukop.
ANSRS had 110 customers this past football season, most notably the NFL’s Washington Commanders, as well as about 30 college programs -- Penn State, Florida State, Texas Tech, Nebraska, Iowa State and Kansas State -- and numerous high school teams. FCS teams will also have access to ANSRS Adjust, an in-game feature to access and analyze live sideline video.
Its product saves time and helps coaches implement game plans earlier in practice every week. Prukop said clients have shared that their situational efficiency, such as in short-yardage third downs and in the red zone, improved significantly.
After ending his coaching career, Eccker started XOS Technologies, which became a leading sports video platform with Prukop as VP of Sales. Catapult acquired XOS in 2016 and rebranded it as Thunder Cloud, making this new partnership a homecoming of sorts.
“It’s like getting the band back together,” Prukop said.