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In today’s edition of Power Up:
- Helios raises $2.2M to scale hockey wearable
- Nex Playground taps NHL for first sports league game
- ACC’s live replay experiment draws ‘rave reviews’ for transparency, access
Helios raises $2.2M to scale hockey wearable
Hockey wearable company Helios has raised a $2.2M seed round primarily from angel investors, including Hockey HOFer Ron Francis -- who is now President of Hockey Operations for the Kraken -- and Mammoth F Alex Kerfoot. N.H.-based Helios also received backing from Stadia Ventures’ accelerator and the Oregon Sports Angels.
Helios’ core product is a sensor that affixes to a player’s shoulder pads and tracks their movement on the ice: metrics such as stride speed, agility and total skating time. Unlike many wearables for indoor sports, Helios does not require any permanent hardware inside an arena or even the placement of temporary beacons, which can often require calibration.
“For any indoor sport, you have to install something, and that’s a critical block on adoption down market below, say, NCAA,” said Helios founder & CEO Bill Near, an MIT graduate who captained the school’s hockey team. “What we saw was this opportunity to bring to the broad base -- nine-year-olds and up -- performance wearables that could actually track sports-specific performance and deliver individualized feedback and player development plans to drive improvement.”
Though originally developed for and marketed to youth hockey, Helios has onboarded customers in high level junior hockey, as well as college and pro. It has been used by the US women’s national team and is the preferred wearable technology of the ECAC, a dozen-school conference of Ivy League and other Northeast schools.
Near said a key unlock with the product was the video syncing feature, offering “the interplay between the data-driven player development but with the stickiness of the video.” Monitoring player load can be important in the travel and showcase hockey circuit, when young athletes might need a data-driven reminder to rest or something more specific to work before the next game.
“It’s really hard for these parent volunteer coaches to give every kid something meaningful about their player development each time they get off the ice or field, and so we felt like technology could really play a role there,” Near said.
Nex Playground taps NHL for first sports league game
Ahead of the start of the 2025-26 NHL season, Nex Playground, a youth-focused gaming console that uses artificial intelligence-powered motion tracking technology in its games, has launched a new title in partnership with the NHL called “NHL Puck Rush.”
Available to Nex “Play Pass” subscribers -- a service that prices $89 annually and offers access to more than 45 games -- NHL Puck Rush challenges users to score as many goals as they can in a limited period of time, with the puck’s direction and height determined by Nex’s camera-based system for reading body position/hand movement.
While Nex has existing games across sports like tennis (Tennis Smash: Racketville), baseball (Homerun Heroes: Starstrikers), basketball (Basketball Knockout) and soccer (Go Keeper), this is the first title on the console that includes licensed IP from a pro sports league.
“Sports is a strategic pillar of our content strategy, as it’s closely aligned with active play,” Nex co-founder & CEO David Lee told SBJ. “Over time, you’ll see us continue investing in original sports games and release fully licensed sports games.”
Nex recently partnered with the USTA to offer its original “Tennis Smash” title as part of the 2025 U.S. Open’s Advantage Arena on-site gaming activation, but Lee noted that fully licensed games like NHL Puck Rush “allow us to deliver a deeper experience where team fandom can be developed with future fans.” NHL Puck Rush launches with the ability to compete as a member of each of the NHL’s 32 teams and unlock jerseys, sticks, pucks and mascots through gameplay. Nex and the NHL are also teaming for an activation at the NHL Shop in NYC from Oct. 7-9, where visitors can demo NHL Puck Rush on Nex Playground and receive 20% off a console ordered online (which runs $249 in the U.S.).
“Attracting and engaging with youth demographics is a key pillar of the NHL’s fan engagement strategy,” said NHL EVP/Business Development & Innovation David Lehanski, SBJ’s 2024 Technology Executive of the Year. “Our work with Nex Playground to introduce NHL Puck Rush to the world is a perfect example of how we’re using youth-focused content and distribution, live interactive experiences, new gaming platforms, and accelerating the growth of youth hockey to further attract young demographics to the league.”
This month, Nex will expand its retail availability into Canada, where the console will cost CA$309, Lee added. Further expansion into Latin America is planned for later in the quarter.
ACC’s live replay experiment draws ‘rave reviews’ for transparency, access
The ACC is the first college league to “let viewers listen live to reviews during select broadcasts,” offering a “welcome dose of transparency, along with rave reviews for taking viewers somewhere they’ve never been before,” according to Aaron Beard of the AP. There is “no waiting for referees to take off their headset after a mystery-filled stoppage and deliver a verdict.” Instead, viewers “can hear frame-by-frame discussions between stadium officials and the replay command center at the league headquarters” in Charlotte. There have been seven games with the replay listen-in, generally earmarked for Friday night broadcasts on ESPN or ESPN2, as well as Saturday nights on the ACC Network. The plan “can vary beyond that based on the volume of games monitored by the replay center at any one time.” The ACC and ESPN are still “tinkering with the visual presentation of video overlays and graphics.” But the experiment already has “succeeded in pulling back the curtain with reviews,” most notably with critical late calls such as Florida State WR Duce Robinson’s later-overturned catch in the team’s loss to the Univ. of Virginia last weekend. The next usage comes with a “spotlight” of Saturday night’s matchup between No. 4 Miami and No. 18 Florida State (AP, 10/1).
START OF SOMETHING BIGGER: In Norfolk, David Teel wrote this “bold innovation” brings “unsurpassed transparency to football officiating that every league, college and professional, should embrace.” Teel: “Kudos to ACC commissioner Jim Phillips for green-lighting the replay access experiment, unprecedented in college football, during the offseason. And props to the league and network executives who last October brainstormed the concept following replay decisions in Miami’s victories over Virginia Tech and Cal that confused fans in real time.” As a result, the “positive feedback from fans, league administrators and national peers has motivated ESPN and the conference to consider other innovations that distinguish ACC broadcasts” (Norfolk VIRGINIAN-PILOT, 10/2).