SBJ Power Up: MLS subs in a Ref Cam for rest of the season

Good morning and happy Friday. We welcomed back the NFL regular season last night, and it started just like the previous season ended: with an Eagles’ win.

I will not share my personal fandom until my team has finally made a return to winning football. It’s my secret! — Ethan Joyce

In today’s edition of Power Up:

• MLS’s Ref Cam coming to Apple TV
• Sponsorship OS PlayMaker raises $1M
• SBJ Live Recap: Optimizing performance through tech

MLS Season Pass on Apple TV will debut the Ref Cam during Earthquakes-LAFC on September 13, allowing fans to see the referee’s view on the field.

The Ref Cam will then be featured during Sunday Night Soccer broadcasts on Apple TV and linear distribution partners for the remainder of the season. MLS tested the feature during D.C. United-Fire on June 7 and Red Bulls-Crew on August 30, with another test to come during Dynamo-Galaxy on September 6. Those tests will provide footage for studio programming.

Starting this weekend, every Sunday Night Soccer match will also include graphics in Spanish. On September 16, MLS will bring back the Player Spotlight: Inter Miami CF broadcast on TikTok LIVE during the Inter Miami-Sounders. The alternate stream features a dedicated camera focused exclusively on Inter Miami throughout the match. The Player Spotlight stream will be featured in four matches this season (MLS).

PlayMaker Software, an AI-infused platform helping rights holders and brands manage their relationships with sponsors and streamline deliverables, has closed a $1M funding round. Precursor Ventures, a California-based firm focused on early-stage tech investment, led the round, which also included participation from Antler, Incisive Ventures and angel investors. The funding will help PlayMaker hire more engineers and grow its customer base.

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PlayMaker’s operating system houses components of sponsorships agreements (contracts, assets) and uses AI to quickly pull information from those files, like contract obligations and partner expectations, and create activation roadmaps.

PlayMaker was co-founded by former Anheuser-Busch sports partnership veteran Hannah Sorkin (the startup’s CEO) and longtime software developer Sameer Mehra (CTO). PlayMaker is headquartered in N.Y. and was founded late last year. Current clients include Poppi, RCX Sports, The Bay Golf Club, Leones de Ponce, and the World Police & Fire Games.

This week’s SBJ Live session, facilitated by senior writer Joe Lemire, discussed revolutionary ways technology has advanced human performance in sports. Lemire was joined by Cartan Capital Founder & CEO CiCi Bellis, Hyperice CEO Jim Huether and CORE Global Head Ross McGraw to shed insight on the topic.

Here are some key takeaways from the session:

• More knowledgeable athletes. Huether shared how technology has become more user-friendly in helping athletes understand and maintain their bodies. “There’s more awareness about your own health,” Huether said. “People are learning about the physiology, the science is catching up to the technology, and now there’s a myriad of opportunities for people to understand health and human performance in ways that they couldn’t years ago.”
• Something for everyone. Bellis explained how tech companies her firm invests in can start with athletes but expand their market into all consumers looking to maintain fitness. “What’s great about a lot of the companies that we see as maybe they’re starting in sports, using that as a beachhead to then move into a broader wellness consumer type market,” Bellis said. “If high-level athletes or even the weekend warrior can validate a product or some sort of performance enhancer, then it’s really likely that an everyday consumer or someone that’s active on an everyday basis will enjoy it or find use out of it as well.”
• Maintaining the human factor. McGraw pointed out that much of the perceived success from wellness technology and/or methods comes from how the individual user responds to it, noting that many people just want to see some sort of improvement in their performance. “People look at the placebo effect as a throwaway, but the placebo effect is [still] an effect,” McGraw explained. A 30 to 50% improvement is huge just because you thought it worked. ... People come to me, and they’ll say, ‘Hey, does this work?’ And my answer is always the same. ... If you think it’s working and it’s working for you, man, keep doing it. ... That’s the human factor. And great coaches know how to harness that human factor in a really impressive way."

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