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What does it take to build something new in sports and technology? We explore the real challenges and opportunities of growing teams, leagues, and businesses from those with first-hand experience. Recorded live at Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans, during the 2023 Sports Innovation Summit.

Jared Kleinstein (CEO, Fresh Tape Media)https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianmichaelcooper/
Brian Michael Cooper (President & COO, American Flag Football League)https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephi-blank-48aa6a42/

About Sports Innovation Summit

The Sports Innovation Summit is a new annual forum from HTX Sports Tech and STWS for sports industry professionals to explore the most pressing issues they're facing today. From the latest technological advancements to new ways to engage fans, as you’ll hear in this episode the summit covers a wide range of topics with a focus on meaningful and actionable insights. Learn more: https://www.htxsportstech.com/summit _____

Australia Sports Innovation Week

This episode is brought to you by the Australia Sports Tech Conference, the Southern Hemisphere’s largest and most respected sports technology industry event. This year’s edition is happening on Thursday, August 31st in Brisbane, Queensland. Agenda, tickets, and more info available at https://stws.co/conference-australia

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Learn from industry experts Dan Healy and Jeremy Jones about the latest revenue growth strategies, sponsorship opportunities, and monetization models that are driving success in the digital era. The discussion also includes an update on the development of legalized US sports betting and how tech is being used to engage with betting sports fans. Recorded live at Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans, during the 2023 Sports Innovation Summit.

Dan Healy (Founder & CEO, FanPower) https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-jeffries-8b53571a/
Jeremy Jones (CRO, nVenue) https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephi-blank-48aa6a42/

About Sports Innovation Summit

Australia Sports Innovation Week

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This discussion delves into the world of fan engagement and uncovers how organizations are creating immersive experiences that captivate audiences, foster brand loyalty, and maximize fan interaction. Recorded live at Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans, during the 2023 Sports Innovation Summit.

Courtney Jeffries (CEO, VRTL) https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-jeffries-8b53571a/
Stephi Blank (VP, Marketing, WIT Sports) https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephi-blank-48aa6a42/
Nate Thompson (Founder, HTX Sports Tech) https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-jeffries-8b53571a/

About Sports Innovation Summit

Australia Sports Innovation Week

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Cricket is the world's second most popular sport with over 2.5 billion fans worldwide. A group of high-profile investors, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, have launched a new T20 tournament in the US. Major League Cricket (MLC) hopes to establish a foothold for cricket in the world's richest sporting market, but will it succeed long term? We spoke with Adam Crosthwaite for the inside word on cricket in the land of the free.

Adam is the co-founder and CEO of The Brand Bar a Marketing agency run nationally across Australia based in Melbourne. As a former first-class wicketkeeper-batsman himself, Adam has worked as a batting and wicketkeeping coach for the Melbourne Renegades in the Big Bash League, the WBBL, and the Victoria State team. Adam has coached internationally for the Seattle Thunderbolts as head coach in the MiLC in the USA, leading the team to win the 2022 National Championship. Adam's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-crosthwaite-66751a71/

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Australia Sports Innovation Week

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Recorded live at Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans, during the 2023 Sports Innovation Summit. This discussion uncovers insights into the power of data and analytics in driving informed decision-making across various aspects of the sports industry, including sales & service performance, operational strategies, and fan behavior analysis.

Tyree White (Director, Business Strategy & Analytics, Nashville Predators) https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyreewhite/
Rachel Goodger (CRO, CrowdIQ) https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-goodger-3491658b/
Michael Farris (Sr. Director of Business Strategy and Insights, Country Music Association (CMA)) https://www.linkedin.com/in/mfarris1/

About Sports Innovation Summit

The Sports Innovation Summit is a new annual forum from HTX Sports Tech and STWS for sports industry professionals to explore the most pressing issues they're facing today. From the latest technological advancements to new ways to engage fans, as you’ll hear in this episode the summit covers a wide range of topics with a focus on meaningful and actionable insights. Learn More: https://www.htxsportstech.com/summit

Australia Sports Innovation Week

Subscribe to the Sports Tech Feed newsletter. Your source for in-depth sports technology insights, news, and analysis: https://sportstechfeed.substack.com

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Mohit Pareek is a seasoned tech and digital-media investment banker, bringing over 14 years of experience advising on all types of M&A and financing transactions focusing on sports tech, gaming, esports, interactive entertainment, and media.

Some of Mohit’s most notable transactions include sale of Echtra Games to Zynga/ Take 2, Spiketrap to Reddit, Firefly Studios to Devolver Digital, FreshPlanet to Vivendi / Gameloft, Slightly Mad Studios to Codemasters / EA, nWay to Animoca Brands, Wildworks to Nazara, Lightstream to Videndum / Creative Solutions, EyeEm to NewValue, and Avira to Investcorp.

Mohit is an MBA from IBS, Mumbai, and a CFA Charterholder.

The full Global Sports Tech Report Q2 2023 is available to download via: https://www.drakestar.com/research/global-sports-tech-update-q2-2023

-- Subscribe to the Sports Tech Feed newsletter. Your source for in-depth sports technology insights, news, and analysis: https://sportstechfeed.substack.com

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Scott Deans is CEO and founder of BeONE Sports, a platform that uses AI and computer vision to help young athletes maximize their performance, gain exposure for their talents, and get advanced training on demand. Scott is a former collegiate kicker and punter, architect, designer, and data analytics manager.

Scott's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdeans00/

Subscribe to the Sports Tech Feed newsletter. Your source for in-depth sports technology insights, news, and analysis: https://sportstechfeed.substack.com

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The use of Generative AI is a contentious issue across many industries, including sports. We spoke with AI expert Steve Wasick for his views on the present realities of AI and where the future of this revolutionary tech is going:

What role can we expect AI to play in the future of sports?
Why is Generative AI so controversial – what is it exactly and why the concern?
How is Generative AI changing and benefiting the sports community?
What fans don’t realize is AI?

Steve has more than a decade of experience in the Generative AI space working with companies like MaxPreps, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, IU Health, and many others. As Founder of infoSentience, his company uses AI to provide millions of automated articles to CBS Sports, ranging from fantasy game recaps to live coverage of the NBA and NFL. Steve was the Technical Editor for the book Enterprise AI for Dummies and graduated magna cum laude from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.

Subscribe to the Sports Tech Feed newsletter. Your source for in-depth sports technology insights, news, and analysis: https://sportstechfeed.substack.com

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Matt Gardner is Vice President, Innovation & Digital Strategy for the NHL’s St. Louis Blues, Enterprise Center, and Stifel Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to being 2019 Stanley Cup Champions, the St. Louis Blues were named the Sports Business Journal 2020 Team of the Year, and were also recognized by Fast Company as one of the 2020 Top 10 Most Innovation Companies in Sports.

Matt has spent 20 years working in professional sports, providing leadership in innovation, technology, strategy, marketing, content creation and revenue generation. Prior to arriving in St. Louis in 2012, Matt was part of the marketing and digital teams at the NBA’s Orlando Magic and the ATP World Tour.

Matt serves as an advisor and mentor for Stadia Ventures, and is a founding member of Xvisory. He is a proud journalism graduate from the University of Kansas.

Matt's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewgardner

Bluenatics blockchain-based fan engagement platform: https://www.nhl.com/blues/news/blues-to-launch-blockchain-based-fan-engagement-program/c-344831002

Subscribe to the Sports Tech Feed newsletter. Your source for in-depth sports technology insights, news, and analysis: https://sportstechfeed.substack.com

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Nate Thompson is a Managing Partner of HTX Sports Tech, a consultancy that specializes in providing strategic guidance to sports organizations, innovation ecosystems, and startups developing technology-enabled products and services in the sports industry.

Nate has over 15 years of experience in the sports industry, working in ticket operations, data analysis, strategic planning, and technology implementation. He has held positions with the Houston Astros, University of Cincinnati, Complete Ticket Solutions, Baltimore Orioles, and Cleveland Guardians.

His expertise in data analysis and technology implementation has helped sports organizations improve their business operations and create new revenue streams while leveraging a passion for utilizing technology to enhance the fan experience and drive business growth in the sports industry.

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This episode is brought to you by the Sports Innovation Summit (https://www.htxsportstech.com/summit), a new one-day event for sports industry professionals. The inaugural event will be hosted in Nashville, TN at Nissan Stadium, Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans, on Wednesday, July 12th.

Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a series of interactive panel sessions led by industry experts, with the aim to push past the hype in sports tech and innovation to focus on driving tangible business outcomes for their organizations.

Learn More and secure tickets at: https://www.htxsportstech.com/summit

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Max Ade is the co-founder and CEO of Pickleheads, the #1 online destination for pickleball. Pickleheads helps players find nearby courts and organize games. The company is backed by Ardent, Overline and Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Boardroom Pickleball. Max previously founded and sold a freelance marketplace called Growth Collective.

Pickleball has cemented itself as the fastest-growing participation sport in the US with 36.5 million people playing between August 2021 and August 2022. According to research from the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, participation nearly doubled in 2022 increasing by 86% year-over-year, and by an astonishing 159% over three years. Learn more about the rapid growth of Pickleball: https://sportstechfeed.substack.com/p/participation-vs-consumption-or-why

Subscribe to Sports Tech Feed, your source for sports technology insights, news, and analysis: https://sportstechfeed.substack.com/

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Snack-sized Sports Tech Feed! After the success of LIV Golf's inaugural Australian event at The Grange Golf Club in Adelaide, we catch up with James Watson for an update on what new broadcast innovations LIV Golf has introduced since we last spoke.

James Watson is the Senior Vice President of Worldwide Production at LIV Golf. James has more than 15 years in sports production including producing and overseeing worldwide championships such as the Australian Open Golf, Australian Open Tennis, Laver Cup and ICC Cricket World Cups.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-watson-37102046/

Behind the Scenes with LIV Broadcast team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubhEfFBpTDk&ab_channel=LIVGolf

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Geoff works with the likes of FIFA, UEFA, AFC, FIBA, and other global sports organizations in a wide range of areas from strategic planning, marketing and communications, digital, fans engagement, public affairs, and knowledge sharing/exchange programs. In addition, Geoff consults with a number of sports tech companies in the CRM, esports, wearable, and fans engagement space. Previously Head of Marketing and Communications (Irish FA) Geoff was responsible for public relations, commercial programs, brand development, and communication with fans.

He is the co-author of the Fan Journey Model: a new simple tool for sports teams and venues to map the key touchpoints, sample the experience of a fan, seek to measure or grade that experience, and then provide possible solutions to strengthen the journey of game day. See the Fan Journey Model here: https://geoffwnjwilson.com/2023/04/06/the-fan-journey-model/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffwnjwilson/----Subscribe to Sports Tech Feed: https://sportstechfeed.substack.com/

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Richard Ayers founded the leading European sports digital marketing agency Seven League in 2012 and is seen as one of the leading thinkers in digital sports marketing, media, and fan engagement. Now that Seven League is part of IMG, he Chairs the company as the digital arm of IMG Media.In 2019 Richard founded a new business, Rematch, delivering live immersive experiences that take you back in time to re-imagined iconic sporting moments and won awards with its debut show, Wimbledon Rematch 1980.Richard also chairs the UK Government’s Sports Business group and is a special advisor to the Centre for Sport and Human Rights. Originally a BBC journalist who launched BBC News online in 1997, Richard has spent most of his career in media. His first sports business role was as Manchester City’s first Head of Digital in 2011-13. Beyond digital and business, he plays a wide variety of sports enthusiastically but badly, including reasonable golf and bang-average table tennis in north London.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardayers/

Sports Tech Feed is brought to you by STWS. Subscribe to our newsletter at: https://sportstechfeed.substack.com

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Jack Kerr is an award-winning, data-driven investigative journalist who has reported for The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and ESPN, produced front-page investigations for The Age and had his work featured in Interpol briefings and academic papers. With funding from the European Union, Jack crafted a suite of web-scraping programs to analyze the international betting market and generated research that was shared with Australia’s financial watchdog, which subsequently announced a money-laundering investigation into an international bookmaker. Jack was recently part of an open-source intelligence (OSINT) investigation into 8XBet, the Thai, Indonesian and Vietnamese-facing operation that Manchester City recently announced as its Asian betting partner.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-kerr-24a773b4/

Sports Tech Feed is brought to you by STWS. Subscribe to our newsletter at: https://sportstechfeed.substack.com/

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Janis Burke, CSEE has been the CEO of the Harris County – Houston Sports Authority since 2006. She became the third chief executive and first woman to hold the position since the inception of the organization in 1997. In addition to overseeing the billion dollars of bond debt service for Houston’s professional sports stadiums, under her leadership, Houston has been awarded major sporting events including: 2023 NCAA Men's Final Four; 2023 College Football Playoff Championship; 2026 FIFA World Cup; U.S. Olympic Trials; collegiate tournaments; numerous National and World Championships; AAU Junior Olympics, and the World Transplant Games. In addition to sitting on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Sports Commissions, Janis has also been recognized locally by Conference USA and Rice University for her outstanding contributions and achievements as a woman in the Houston sports industry, identified by the Texas Executive Women’s Association as a “Woman on the Move,” and recently named one of “Houston’s 50 Most Influential Women.”

Sports Tech Feed is brought to you by STWS. Learn more: https://sportstechworldseries.com/podcast/

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Ridley Plummer is the Australian Open's Metaverse and NFT Project Manager, leading the AO Metaverse strategy and overseeing the development of the Metaverse and Web3 projects. Spearheading the AO Metaverse launch and AO Art Ball NFT's, Ridley is passionate about NFT and blockchain technology and its potential to evolve industries beyond physical sporting events into the virtual world. Ridley has been instrumental in progressing the AO's launch into the Metaverse and has been with Tennis Australia and the AO for four years.

Prior to this, Ridley had worked across a range of worldwide sporting events including the NHL and NFL Superbowl, working with Budweiser and Bud Light to activate in-stadium connected tech-product integrations. Ridley's expertise extends from project management and product design to marketing innovation and event management, however, Ridley's passion lies in creating truly immersive experiences through the Metaverse, NFTs and Web3 to build brand awareness, drive meaningful connections and excite consumers about the future potential of these technologies.

This discussion was recorded from a Live Q&A hosted by Thomas Alomes the SVP, Market Insights, STWS. Follow STWS on LinkedIn for future Live Interactive Q&A sessions with thought-leaders from across the sports tech ecosystem: linkedin.com/company/sportstechworldseries/

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Troy Taylor is the Senior Director, Tonal Strength Institute a newly formed human performance unit within the connected fitness unicorn Tonal. Troy joined Tonal in June 2021 after six years as High Performance Director for US Ski and Snowboard. In this previous role, he led the interdisciplinary departments that prepare U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s elite athletes toward their journeys to podiums by seeking to enhance performance through institutional knowledge and cutting-edge technology. Troy has been leading high-performance programs across a broad set of Olympic sports for more than 15 years.

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-watson-37102046/

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Edward Sulley has 21 years of professional football experience and joined Hudl as Director of Customer Solutions after a successful 11 year period at one of the fastest growing global sports organisations, City Football Group (CFG), working with 7 clubs in Manchester, New York, Melbourne, Yokohama, Girona, Montevideo and Chengdu. His diverse experiences and qualifications span Coaching, Performance Analysis, Sports Science, Medical, Scouting, Recruitment, Research, Innovation, Strategy, Project Management and Leadership. During the last 5 years, his main focus at CFG was to design and implement a football strategy for their clubs in Japan and China, leveraging best practice knowledge.

Learn More: Hudl Elite Blog

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Zack Weiner is the Co-Founder and President of Overtime with over 65 million social media fans driving an average of over 2 billion video views each month. He also co-created OTE (Overtime Elite) and OT7, the transformative sports leagues that offer the world’s most talented basketball players and football players respectively better pathways to becoming professional athletes. He currently serves on the board of directors.

Weiner is a recipient of the following accolades:

Forbes’ "30 Under 30"
Sports Business Journal’s "Forty Under 40"
Leaders In Sports’ "40 Under 40"

Prior to founding Overtime, Weiner was the CEO and Founder of The Sports Quotient which he started at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a 3x Ivy League Chess Champion. Weiner graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in economics and mathematics.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/zachary-weiner-02071237/

STWS is a trusted and experienced global strategic advisory and consulting services firm, delivering solutions to grow organizations in sports technology and adjacent markets.

Learn more: https://sportstechworldseries.com/

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Spanish top-flight football league LaLiga launched its own technology company, LaLiga Tech in 2021. It offers a cloud-hosted ecosystem through which various rights holders are managing their OTT, fan campaigns, antipiracy and match data. On top of the technology LaLiga Tech also offers consultancy on data analysis and fan activation. Minerva Santana joined LaLiga in February 2016, following 10 years of experience in project implementation and process optimization at multinational companies from various industries. She is currently Director of Innovation & Global Development at LaLiga Tech, running a department whose mission is to increase collaboration and innovation initiatives across the sports industry, delivering more value to fans and to rights holders through high-impact technology solutions.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minervasantanaprojectdirector/

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With over a decade of experience working at the intersection of sports and technology, Cory Jez has cemented himself as one of the leading operators in the space. With experience building analytics departments in both the NBA (Utah Jazz) and the MLS (Austin FC); Cory has hands-on experience helping teams implement data into their decision-making processes. He currently works as a consultant for teams in the NBA, MLS, European soccer, and multiple golfers on the PGA Tour. Cory has spoken at several industry events including SXSW, Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, United Soccer Coaches Convention, and multiple podcasts. Cory holds an MS in Analytics from Georgia Tech and a BS in Economics from Virginia Tech. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Kellie.

Twitter: @JezData

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coryjez

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Scott is the Senior Vice President Digital Operations at PGA TOUR where he oversees the Digital Product Development teams and the TOUR’s Broadcast Technology groups. These teams focus on delivering the best digital and live streaming experiences for the fans of the PGA TOUR. He led the transition that brought the TOUR’s digital assets and capabilities in-house in 2013. In 2021 the Digital and Broadcast tech teams implemented “Every Shot Live” for the THE PLAYERS Championship which live streamed every shot from every player for the first time at a professional golf tournament. During his tenure the teams have released a wide variety of innovative experiences for the PGA TOUR including the latest version of the TOURCast platform, a 3D simulated experience that lets fans see a every shot live from all PGA TOUR Events. Scott came to the TOUR in September 2005 having previously worked for Turner Broadcasting, Viant Corp. and New Era of Networks.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottgutterman

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René Wormhoudt is the High-Performance Coach (Strength & Stamina) of the Dutch Men's National Soccer team and CEO / Co-founder of the Athletic Skills Model Company (ASM). ASM is built around the philosophy that all athletes benefit from multidisciplinary training, providing educational programs for coaches and instructors, developing training materials, and designing formats for fields and courts that allow for multidisciplinary practices and training.

Inspired by the work of Professor Geert Savelsberg two decades ago, René started to challenge the belief of coaches that early specialization was beneficial to youth players, outlining its detrimental effect on the overall development of motoric skills of athletes. With the support of the legendary soccer player/coach Johan Cruyff, he reformed the renowned soccer academy of FC Ajax Amsterdam, and partnered with Professor Savelsbergh to develop new initiatives that transformed Dutch thinking on sports education and coaching. René is co-author of four books including The Athletic Skills Model: Optimizing Talent Development Through Movement Education.

VIDEO: Opening day of the innovative and inclusive Skills Garden in the city Almere (The Netherlands). Designed by ASM. https://youtu.be/iqImFHe1cLc

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renewormhoudt

With special thanks to Netherlands Business Support Office (NBSO) Texas for their support.

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Andrew Walton is a trailblazer of sports technology in Australia. His current role is as Managing Director of Sports Tech World Series (STWS), the leader in sports technology consulting, education and events. Andrew began his career in sports technology as the Co-Founder of InteractSport, a scoring and management software platform for sports at the national, state, association and club level including Cricket Australia, Netball Australia, Australian Rugby Union and The ECB. InteractSport was acquired by Sportradar in 2021. Andrew has previously served on a range of Boards as a Board Member for Vicsport, Bowls Australia, and the Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN).

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/anwalton

Join us at APAC's leading sports innovation conference, the Australian Sports Technology Conference on Friday 2nd September, 2022. Limited Early Bird Tickets are available now: sportstechworldseries.com/conference-australia

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Libby Owens is the CEO of Champion Data, a sports stats and technology company at the intersection of event and tracking data, technology, Media and Entertainment. Champion Data's mission to collaborate with sports and their partners to tell the story behind the game through data and data driven content.

Libby has experience across the regulatory environment of communications and media, in sports administration and most recently on the service side selling into and supporting the sports and media ecosystems. Before taking on the CEO role Libby led Champion Data's operations and commercial business as COO after joining from Cricket Australia's media and digital rights team. Prior to Cricket Australia, Libby was involved in a range of projects for the Australian Communications and Media Authority in subjects as broad as children's programming, control and cross media ownership, spectrum management, anti-siphoning and ISP policy.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-libby-owens-5a9a8439/

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Michael Conley is the Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, which includes the Cleveland Monsters (AHL), Canton Charge (NBAGL) and Cavs Legion Gaming Club (NBA2K). Michael oversees all the information technology, data governance, emerging technology and digital operations for the franchise. Recently, Michael led the technology ideation and application for the Transformation of Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, a major renovation project to transform the nearly 26-year-old venue.

With over two decades worth of experience in media, digital and technology-related positions, Michael's leadership has helped set a solid business foundation from which the Cleveland Cavaliers, Cleveland Monsters, Canton Charge, Cavs Legion GC and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse have flourished into one of the most successfully-operated and technology-driven sports and entertainment teams in the country.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpconley7

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mpconley

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Charlie Shin is a seasoned sports executive with more than 20 years of experience in customer strategy and marketing. He currently serves as VP of Data & Analytics for the Indianapolis Colts. Prior to that, Charlie worked in Major League Soccer for 14 years. While there, he served as Vice President of Data Strategy & Analytics, overseeing the enterprise data strategy, CRM initiatives and development of league-wide marketing technology infrastructure.

Prior to joining MLS, Charlie was a senior business consultant at IBM Business Consulting Services and PwC Consulting for over six years. He managed various projects involving customer strategy, CRM strategy, performance marketing, customer segmentation and new business model development. In addition to his role with MLS, he serves as an adjunct faculty at New York University’s graduate program for Integrated Marketing.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlieshin

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CRMinSports

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Matilda is the co-founder and General Partner of Ludis Capital, a globally based fund investing in early stage companies operating at the intersection of sports, technology and media. She has over 15 years of experience helping companies strategize, conceptualize, develop, and deliver on digital products and experiences. Prior to Ludis, Matilda built out the digital media strategy group for the National Football League (NFL), covering the entire portfolio of the League’s direct to consumer digital experiences.

Matilda has held leadership roles at McKinsey & Co, PayPal, and Sung Capital Partners (family office). Matilda is an active mentor and advisor to a number of startups, accelerators, and academic institutions. Her investment portfolio includes names such as Pumpjack Dataworks, Hyperice, SimWin, Pilotly, Gemini, MakerDAO, YBVR, Nifty Islands, 3ICE and others; Recent exits include Robinhood and Bakkt. Matilda began her career in investment banking and holds a Bachelors of Commerce from McGill University in Canada and an MBA from Berkeley Haas.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matildasung/

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Roger Mitchell is Founder of Albachiara, an advisory and investment business that consults with various companies and rights holders in the sport and music ecosystem, actively investing in sportech, often taking the NED Chariman CFO role. The areas of sporttech expertise are content (digital publishing), fan engagement, sports media and formats, DTC, sports (big) data. With a specific eye on AI innovation. He also has his own very popular business of sport podcast AreYouNotEntertained

Roger background is as a qualified CA and investment banker, involved as Chair in 3 IPO exits. Roger has been an in the music/sport industries for 27 years. Starting as a journalist in the early 90s covering Italian football for Sky/BBC, he joined EMI in the mid 90s as CFO Italy, and lived the digital disruption of that industry in the first person. He was then the founding CEO commissioner of Scottish football in 1998, representing Scotland also in UEFA.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerpmitchell/

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Stephen Smith is the Founder and CEO of Kitman Labs, the sports technology and analytics company setting a new industry standard for how elite sports organizations use data. Stephen founded Kitman Labs in 2012 and now lives in Palo Alto, CA where he focuses on expanding Kitman Labs in elite US sports. His areas of expertise include injury assessment, rehabilitation and analytics and he has a strong interest in the use of technology and emerging trends in sport science to further enhance sport science and medicine.

Previously he worked with Leinster Rugby as a Sports Injury Rehabilitation Coach within the Strength & Conditioning Department between 2008-2014. Stephen holds a Higher Diploma in Human Physiology and Health Science, a BSc (Hons) in Sports & Exercise Rehabilitation and an MSc in Football Rehabilitation.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephensmithsports

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Rajan Mehta is the EVP, Chief Product & Technology Officer at WWE, responsible for consumer technology, which includes the WWE Network & WWE.com. In addition, he manages their enterprise technology strategy & operations, including Video Delivery, Cybersecurity, Data Technology, & Information Technology.

Mehta joined WWE in 2013 as Vice President, Digital Technology and was promoted to Senior Vice President, Media Technology in 2015. Prior to joining WWE, Mehta was with NBC Universal where he held leadership roles with NBC Sports and served as the Chief Technology Officer for Dyle Mobile TV. Mehta has also held technology positions for General Electric, and Sitetrends, an east coast based internet company.

Mehta has been recognized with numerous industry awards including a 2008 Emmy Award for "Outstanding New Approaches in Sports Broadcasting," for his work with NBC Olympics and multiple Webby Awards for his work with the WWE Network.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajanrmehta

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Ridley Plummer is the AO's Metaverse and NFT Project Manager, leading the AO Metaverse strategy and overseeing the development of the Metaverse and Web3 projects. Spearheading the AO Metaverse launch and AO Art Ball NFT's, Ridley is passionate about NFT and blockchain technology and its potential to evolve industries beyond physical sporting events into the virtual world.

Ridley has been instrumental in progressing the AO's launch into the Metaverse and has been with Tennis Australia and the AO for four years. Prior to this, Ridley had worked across a range of worldwide sporting events including the NHL and NFL Superbowl, working with Budweiser and Bud Light to activate in-stadium connected tech-product integrations. Ridley's expertise extends from project management and product design to marketing innovation and event management, however, Ridley's passion lies in creating truly immersive experiences through the Metaverse, NFTs and Web3 to build brand awareness, drive meaningful connections and excite consumers about the future potential of these technologies.

Twitter: @RidleyPlummer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ridleyplummer/

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A leading sports marketing technology and investment expert Michael Broughton is currently Partner at Acceleration Equity, a sports-focused equity investment firm. Previously, Michael led the Technology Strategy for FIFA holding the strategic relationship with the big data and tech companies globally. Additionally, he was responsible for the investment strategy within the organisation and supported the Gaming and eSports group. He joined from Sports Investment Partners (SIP) where he was co-Founder of Europe’s first Sports investment vehicle. Within SIP he led the companies approach to new technologies and disruptive business models to uncover new ways for sports businesses to grow. Prior to starting SIP he spent time with Nolan Partners working with Chairmen and Chief Executives to enhance their executive teams and also in Motorsports where he worked with preeminent sponsors such as Lucky Strike and Diageo manage their sports assets.

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Nic Catterral is High Performance Coach for Peak Power Golf specialising in working with professional golfers on the PGA Tour. For over 11 years, Nic has worked as a High Performance Coach Specialising in Strength and Conditioning, Musculoskeletal Therapy and Sports Science for Professional Athletes, collegiate teams and amateur athletes. Nic has a particular interest in the use of sports and assessment technology to provide evidence-based approaches to the improvement of athletic performance. Previous roles include with the Australian Olympic Golf Team, Australian Cricket Team, Brisbane Lions AFL Club and the two premiership winning years with the Brisbane Roar Football Club.

https://sportstechworldseries.com/podcast

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Dr. Phil Wagner is founder-CEO of Sparta Science, a physician and a strength coach whose own athletic career as a football and rugby player was cut short by a series of avoidable training injuries. Dr. Wagner’s commitment to data-driven coaching and athlete development began as a strength coach for U.C. Berkeley and UCLA and as a professional rugby coach in New Zealand and Australia.

Frustrated by the lack of evidence-based approaches to athletic performance and injury prevention within professional sports, Phil received his medical degree from USC focused on biomechanics. Phil’s passion for protecting athlete health and longevity through injury resilience coupled with his medically-oriented human performance mindset inspired him to found Sparta Science, a movement technology and data science company focused on improving musculoskeletal health.

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Lloyd Danzig is the Managing Partner of Sharp Alpha Advisors, a venture capital firm specializing in sports betting and online gaming. He previously managed institutional portfolios for BlackRock, data science initiatives for Samsung, and machine learning engines for Simplebet. Lloyd completed his undergraduate studies, in Economics, at The Wharton School of Business and his postgraduate studies, in Computer Science, at Columbia University.

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Alison Lu is in her 5th season with the 49ers and 2nd as Director, Business Strategy & Analytics. Previously, she served as both a Manager and Senior Manager in the BSA department. In her current role, Lu works on projects that include food & beverage strategy, technology and innovation, ticketing/sales analytics, and 49ers-affiliated businesses. Alison also works for Elevate Sports Ventures, a leading sports consultancy, helping to launch and hone sales and business strategies for clients across various global sports teams and leagues.

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Jasmine Kingsley is Senior Vice President, Legal & People and General Counsel at Hudl, a global leader in sports video technology headquartered in Lincoln, NE. Jasmine began her legal career in private practice at law firms in Silicon Valley and focused her practice on technology and intellectual property transactions. She joined Hudl as General Counsel in 2015 and currently leads the company’s global Legal and People Operations teams.

Jasmine is helping to deliver the third annual BreakThrough Summit on Tuesday, Dec. 14 from 12pm – 5pm ET. The Summit is a free digital leadership conference designed to develop and celebrate women in sports. The event is organized and developed by Hudl and WeCOACH and free to attend. Registrations open now: https://www.breakthroughsummit.live/

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Jayne Peressini is the VP, Growth at Dapper Labs. In her newly-created role, she leads and directs all new and existing user growth efforts for Dapper Labs across NBA Top Shot, CryptoKitties, upcoming titles - as well as Flow. Jayne’s career across the mobile and sports technology industries includes over thirteen years of driving growth at notable companies like DraftKings, Machine Zone, Reddit, and Electronic Arts (EA). She ran growth for major properties—from DraftKing’s Sportsbook launch in the US to the most recent Madden game release and FIFA’s mobile app globally.

Jayne is passionate about mental health and is a staunch supporter of women in the industry. She holds a Masters of Science in Digital Marketing from the University of East London and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Santa Clara University.

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Jon Flynn is the Data & AI business lead for Microsoft Sports, a role that is dedicated to bringing new and exciting capabilities to life across the Microsoft Sports business. In this role, he helps existing and new clients harness the power of their data, and apply innovative ways of delivering competitive advantage across all Sport disciplines, front and back office. Previously Jon held leadership positions at Apple, Tibco, and IBM and provides advisory services to many innovative start-ups in the technology space.

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Troy is the Senior Director, Tonal Strength Institute, a newly formed human performance unit within the connected fitness unicorn Tonal.

Troy joined Tonal in June 2021 after six years as High Performance Director for US Ski and Snowboard. In this previous role, he led the interdisciplinary departments that prepare U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s elite athletes toward their journeys to podiums by seeking to enhance performance through institutional knowledge and cutting-edge technology. Troy has been leading high-performance programs across a broad set of Olympic sports for more than 15 years.

You can listen to more Sports Tech Feed episodes, including Troy's first appearance, here: https://sportstechworldseries.com/podcast/

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Peter Gray (SVP, Advanced Technology Group, NTT Data) in conversation with Vincent Pereira (Fmr. Head of Digital, A.S.O / Le Tour de France).

Peter is a Senior Vice President within NTT Ltd where he leads the Advanced Technology Group for Sport and is part of the Global CTO Office leadership team. The Advanced Technology Group for Sport conceptualizes, architects and delivers strategic innovation projects, particularly within the sports industry. This includes the delivery of NTT's Tour de France and Team Dimension Data technology programs, as well as support for NTT's solution delivery to a range of different sporting teams, governing bodies, event organisers and venue operators around the world.

Vincent is formerly, Head of Digital for Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO). The company that owns, designs and organises top international sporting events, specialising in the ‘non-stadia’ events. A.S.O. is involved in 5 major sports including cycling with Le Tour de France, motor sports with Le Dakar, sailing with Le Tour Voile, mass events with the Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris and golf with the Lacoste Ladies Open de France.

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Rocky Chow (Chief Commercial Officer, Hong Kong Rugby Union)

The HKRU organises the world-renowned Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens as part of the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series, as well as a thriving domestic competition and multi-layered Community Foundation programme that supports positive change in society through sport.

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Anthony Vennare is the Co-Founder of Fitt Insider a newsletter, podcast & investment fund covering the business of fitness and wellness. He's an accomplished founder, fitness professional and former U.S Marine.

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Industry expert panel discussion from the 2020 Australian Sports Innovation Week.

Chris Smith (Founder & Director, Big Esports)
Stefy Bau (Co-Founder & Director, Init Esports)
Xiao (Sean) Zhang (CEO & Co-Founder, Talon Esports)
Felix LaHaye (Founder, United Esports)

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Dr. Kirk Wakefield is the founder and Chief Research Officer of Wakefield Research Partners, a research firm measuring partnership and brand impact for over 20 pro teams. He is also the Edwin W. Streetman Professor of Retail Marketing at Baylor University, where he is the Executive Director of the Sports Strategy & Sales (S3) program and author of the book Team Sports Marketing. Kirk is a regular contributor to Sports Money on Forbes.com and his scholarly works appear in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

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Dr. Tom Waller is the Senior Vice President, Advanced Innovation and Chief Science Officer at lululemon athletica inc. In 2012 Dr. Waller founded Whitespace, lululemon’s internal R&D and ideation group in 2012. In this group Tom heads up a team of 30 creative innovators and R&D experts spanning the fields of science, technology, engineering and materials with a common focus of inventing the company’s product future. Including developing what lululemon defines as the “Science of Feel”. A holistic approach that explores how clothing makes the wearer feel and how this impacts their performance potential – the belief being that when a person feels good, they perform to their true potential.

This approach has led Tom and his team to investigate a range of performance-related and fundamental garment characteristics including tactile qualities, how fabric travels with or across the skin as the body moves, and even the noise it makes in response to movement. Working cross-functionally with lululemon’s design team and community network of athlete and yogi ambassadors, Whitespace™ is integral to the development of innovative new fabrics and designs to support an individual’s optimal athletic performance.

Before lululemon, Dr. Waller served as Head of Aqualab at Speedo International Ltd where he led new product and fabric development for all Olympic elite swimming projects. Having completed his PhD in 2004, he was appointed as Head of R&D at Loughborough spin-out company Progressive Sports Technologies which offers a range of testing and development services to global sports brands.

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Steve Murray is Managing Partner at Revolution Growth, the Washington DC-based investment firm that has invested nearly $1 billion in growth-stage companies. In 2016, Revolution Growth invested in DraftKings and Steve joined the board. In April 2020, despite a temporary shutdown among major sports leagues, DraftKings debuted on the public market through a three-way SPAC merger with Steve working closely on the deal.

Other notable investments from Revolution Growth include Sportradar, the world’s leading supplier of sports and betting-related data and CLEAR, the biometric identity company that has made entry into airports and sports stadiums around the country faster, safer, and more convenient.

Steve is currently on the boards of Revolution Growth companies BigCommerce, Convene, Glowforge, Interactions, Tala and of course DraftKings. He is also a board observer at Tempus and Uptake. Steve joined Revolution from Softbank where he worked for nearly 20 years with some of the most important technology companies of our generation including Yahoo, Etrade, GeoCities, GSI Commerce, Alibaba, Fitbit, Kabbage and many others.

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Brian Matzat | Director of Digital Innovation | Portland Trail Blazers

Brian Matzat enters his seventh season with the Trail Blazers and Rose Quarter as Director of Digital Innovation. Matzat is responsible for the advancement of digital strategy by enhancing digital experience and leading development of new digital products for the organization. Prior to his time in Oregon, Matzat earned his Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Communication at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin. A vegan and avid cyclist, the Wisconsin native feels right at home in North Portland.

Lenny Goh | Vice President of Business Development | Tradable Bits.

Hailing from Vancouver, Canada, Lenny has a wealth of experience in his career in eCommerce, digital and social media in a variety of startups. He blends his passion for sport and technology together as the Vice President of Business Development at Tradable Bits.

Lenny works with global sports and entertainment brands to build their fan communities and activate their data. An advocate of fan-based marketing techniques, he empowers partners to build better fan experiences that are more personalized so they can bring their fans closer to the teams and brands they love. Lenny specializes in helping partners find innovative solutions that add value cross-functionally across marketing, data/CRM/BI, corporate partnerships, merchandise and ticket sales.

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Fredda Rodriguez joined Concacaf 3 years ago as the Head of Digital & Emerging Technologies to oversee the Digital and Emergent technologies department, including digital platforms, product development, digital marketing, content strategy, innovation, and all digital revenue generation activities linked to Concacaf tournaments and events.

Concacaf (the Confederation of North, Central America & Caribbean Association Football) is one of FIFA's six continental governing bodies for association football. Its 41 member associations represent countries and territories mainly in North America, including the Caribbean and Central America, and three nations from the Guianas subregion of South America — Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. Concacaf's primary functions are to organize competitions for national teams and clubs, and to conduct the World Cup and Women's World Cup qualifying tournaments.

Prior to Fredda's role at Concacaf, she gained over 20 years of experience in the digital field, including with clients such as Intel, Cisco, SAP, ESPN, Avon and Telemundo. Fredda has won several awards in the digital media and interactive activation categories across both the US and LATAM Markets.

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Phil Andrews was appointed Chief Executive Officer of USA Weightlifting in April 2016, having held the post on an Interim basis since December 2015. With responsibility for overseeing the strategy and operations of the organization, he has helped to transform the sport overseeing a complete change of culture within the sport which has seen membership in the United States almost treble since he took over.

Andrews has also restructured the operations and governance of USA Weightlifting; supported significant reform internationally especially in the area of anti-doping; hosted three International Weightlifting Federation World Championship events; created the first independent Ethics and Judicial process and overseen the best high performance results in 60 years.

Prior to his roles with USA Weightlifting, Andrews worked in professional Ice Hockey for British Champions Coventry Blaze. He learnt how to grow a minority sport alongside Team GB and served on the founding board of the British University Ice Hockey Association as well as charity Hockey Stars for Hope.

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Greg Harvey is the Chief Innovation Officer for The Famous Group. In this role, he's led the transition of The Famous Group from a traditional creative services company into a forward-thinking creative services technology business that develops and owns several software platforms and solutions. These platforms include Vixi a real-time social display application powered by Unreal Engine, Virtual Seat a cloud-based enterprise solution that delivers large-scale audiences virtually into live broadcast events, as well as the companies new Mixed Reality solutions. Their clients & projects include 13 Super Bowls, Nike, the NFL, Live Nation, the NBA finals, Ubisoft, NCAA Final Four, Pepsi, NHL All-Star Weekend, AT&T, and more than 90 professional sports teams and venues.

Greg's role covers discovering new technologies that can be integrated into the company’s software platforms/solutions, building technology partnerships to further expand the company’s products and services, integrating Unreal Engine across the company’s software and creative services, implementing a robust remote cloud-based production pipeline and exploring new investor relations, as well as being the face of innovation for the company.

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Zaileen Janmohamed is SVP, Partnership Development & Innovation, Commercial at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Properties. She's a passionate leader with a wealth of holistic experience on the brand, agency and property sides of the sports marketing business. As the USOPP’s head of partnership development & innovation, Zaileen works at the intersection of sales and partner management and activation, using market data to help evolve and innovate business strategy and opportunities for existing and future Team USA and LA28 partners. She also works closely with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to bring future-forward solutions to Team USA Athletes and the Movement as a whole. Most recently, Zaileen launched the Athlete Marketing Platform (AMP), a digital marketplace that houses Athlete group marketing rights and as well, directly connects Athletes to Brands for individual endorsement opportunities.

Prior to USOPP, Zaileen guided brands like Intel, Google and Visa in sponsorship and experiential marketing opportunities as senior vice president of client consulting and services at GMR Marketing. She also served as head of Olympics management at Visa., where she was responsible for delivering Visa’s premier sports sponsorship on a global scale. Zaileen began her career as an account executive at Major League Soccer (MLS).

Zaileen is an advocate for diversity and inclusion to drive culture and business. In 2016, she was honored as a member of Sports Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 Class and Leaders’ Leaders Under 40 Class of 2017. Her approach to sponsorship strategy has been featured in two books: What Sponsors Want and Beyond Harvard. Zaileen is also the Founder of the Women in Sport Business Program at the University of Massachusetts.

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This week we're joined by two guests: Sue Thaden (CEO, From Now On) & David Pillen (Assistant AD, Marketing) Rice University.

Sue Thaden is founder and CEO of From Now On (FNO). The FNO vision is to be the community engagement platform for sports and events. After five years in the market, FNO now offers Fan X, a mobile engagement solution serving over 90 US colleges, high schools, teams, venues, and events, including multiple NCAA championships, the NAIA, The Ohio State University, Rice University, Xavier University, and high schools across the US.

David Pillen joined Rice Athletics in the spring of 2018 as the Assistant Athletic Director Marketing. David is responsible for creating the marketing strategy and plan for Rice Athletics. He will administer and oversee game presentation, special events and promotions, band and spirit groups, digital marketing, apparel + licensing, advertising, video broadcast, creative video and design, sponsorship collaboration, campaign execution and be overall responsible for increasing revenue and attendance, creating a positive and exciting game day atmosphere, increasing fan engagement and furthering the brand of Rice Athletics. Pillen came to Rice after spending four and a half years at Louisiana Tech University, one as the Director of Video Production & Creative Services and three and a half as the Assistant AD for Marketing.

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Andrew Macaulay is the Chief Technology Officer at Topgolf where he leads the development of innovative ways to experience and grow the game of golf – in-person, virtually and digitally. As a self-proclaimed golf lover, Andrew works to introduce new audiences to the game through technology.

Prior to Topgolf, Andrew served as CIO at WesTower Communications, a leader in the cell tower construction and maintenance business. He is also the former CIO at Clearwire Communications, the company that built the first-ever 4G wireless network in the U.S. There, he transformed the cost, quality, engagement and output of the IT Department.

Andrew earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Operations Research from the University of Leeds in England, and an MBA from Baylor University in Texas. Andrew is from the U.K. near Watford, the home of the first Topgolf venue. Today, Andrew resides in Dallas with his wife and their three sons.’

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Jean-Baptiste has worked in the sport industry for the past 10 years across multiple positions which lead him to drive the innovation strategy within UEFA and set-up the UEFA Innovation Hub. This delivers high-quality innovation programmes to address UEFA’s needs in delivering the 2019–24 UEFA strategy, through new partnerships and diverse collaborations with a wide range of stakeholders (including UEFA staff, start-ups, academic institutions, cross-sport federations and more). Among his new responsibilities as Chief Strategy Officer at LaSource, Jean-Baptiste is now in charge of supporting sports organisations in leveraging innovation, strategic collaborations and partnerships with startups.

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Jenna Kurath serves as Vice President of Startup Partner Development overseeing partner relations and resource management of Comcast SportsTech – a multi-stage accelerator focused on developing and investing in the world’s next great sports technologies and The FARM – an innovation hub supporting early-stage startup founders.

In this role, Jenna is responsible for leading strategy for both accelerator funds; defining the investment thesis and managing key industry partnerships to build and curate a team of advisors and mentors, along with custom-designed curriculum and capital investment, to attract the best startups from around the world to innovate in Atlanta. Both programs are part of a larger portfolio of Comcast NBCUniversal accelerator investments, including LIFT Labs in Philadelphia, focused on entrepreneurial engagement to help the next generation of technology leaders succeed. Learn more: https://www.comcastsportstech.com

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Ricardo Mazzucca is CEO of Arena Hub. Located within Allianz Parque, Sao Paulo, in an area of 4,000 m² with a capacity for more than 1,000 people, Arena Hub is the largest center for sports innovation in Latin America (LATAM). The Hub seeks to develop the sports, media and entertainment industries generating social and economic impact. Before Arena Hub, Ricardo worked for 20 years as the Sports Marketing Director of TV Globo, a Brazilian media group that’s the largest commercial TV network in LATAM and second largest in the world. He also served as the South American Marketing Manager for Umbro International.

Arena Hub is a global partner of STWS. The STWS-Arena Hub partnership was established with the goal of exchanging knowledge, experiences and content to amplify each partner’s impact on the global sports technology industry. Learn more about Partnering with us today: sportstechworldseries.com/partnerships

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Dr. Markus Deutsch is the Co-Founder & CEO of Fusion Sport. Markus started his career in High Performance sport after completing a PhD in Physiology at the University of Otago and working closely with the New Zealand All Blacks National Rugby team. In 2003 he co-founded Fusion Sport to pursue the development of sports technology products including their Athlete Management System, Smartabase. Which has become the industry standard in assisting teams centralize and make sense of the data they are collecting, used by over 260 high performance organisations globally.

In his role as CEO Markus remains actively involved with clients and product development, managing the overall direction of Fusion Sport into the future. In 2020 the company secured a funding round of $5.5m and has played an integral role in COVID-19 illness screening and tracking for clients, including the NBA season restart.

You can find more info about Fusion Sport in the latest Chapter of the Sports Tech Annual, a new industry research publication bringing together the most comprehensive directory of companies in the global sports tech landscape. It also features industry insights and commentary from leaders in the sports tech ecosystem. Free to download now: sportstechworldseries.com/annual

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John Pollard is the Vice President, Business Development at Zebra Sports, a division of Zebra Technologies, the “Official On-Field Player-Tracking Provider for the NFL”. John leads the company’s team engagement efforts with the NFL, NCAA, as well as other sports around the world. In addition to his management responsibilities, John continues to work directly with the league and team personnel. This includes coaching and analytics staff around the NFL and college football to help organizations use statistical, analytical, and player-tracking/performance data and technologies to work more efficiently and support informed decision-making.

John has held various product marketing, management and business development roles and provided consulting services in the consumer goods, technology, and sports industries working with some of the most identifiable corporations and influential brands in the world including Ray-Ban, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Oracle Corporation, Microsoft, the NBA, and the NFL. As an industry consultant, John continued to enjoy working closely with team and media clients, including NFL and NCAA coaching staffs and personnel departments, and on-air talent helping them derive insights and knowledge from their various information sources and analytical studies to aid in game planning and strategy, self-scouting, player evaluation and roster valuation.

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Sceenic Watch Together white-label software solution (SDKs & APIs) power the world’s best co-viewing experiences for broadcasters, Leagues and OTT vendors, allowing users to share their favourite content with family and friends on their own platforms. Their clients include LaLiga, WeLoveGaming eSports and BT Sport among others.

Paul Bojarski started his first company Skipworth, an online music streaming service, in the dot com boom era back in 1998, aged only 17. He then spent the next 10 years (2004-2013) running AOL UK and MTV Digital Ad Ops before relocating with Viacom to Buenos Aires, to head up Digital Ad Sales (revenue growth from $0.5m to $7m in just 2 years).

Paul then once again innovated but this time in the video streaming space with SayYeah, the world's first Watch Together Premium Millennial Video Streaming service he co-founded in 2013, for which he led the fundraising and product. Subsequently, SayYeah pivoted to Sceenic in 2016, a B2B SaaS company he also co-founded, for which he secured funding from R/GA Ventures, SFC Capital, NMA.VC and LCIF and grew the company to 18 full time employees currently.

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Mark Lambert enters his ninth season with the Lightning, his second as Director of High Performance and Strength Coach after previous serving as Strength and Conditioning coach.

An industry veteran of more than 20 years, Lambert has worked with hundreds of athletes ranging from amateur ranks to the professional tiers as well. With the Lightning, Lambert is responsible for overseeing all planning for in- and off-season player workout regimens to optimize performance and increase player physicality.

This episode is brought to you by Kinduct. Used by over 550 professional and elite sports teams, Kinduct's Athlete Management System consolidates athlete performance, wellness, and injury-related data. By consolidating often-siloed data, we empower coaches and trainers to make informed decisions that save time and optimize results.

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David is the inaugural High Performance Director of Major League Soccer Expansion club Austin FC. David joins Austin FC after three years as the first High Performance Director for the NBA’s Orlando Magic. During David’s stewardship of the Magic’s high performance department, the team made back-to-back playoff appearances for the first time since 2012. Prior to this David spent nine seasons with the Seattle Sounders. While with the Sounders, the team won MLS Cup (2016), the U.S. Open Cup four times, and made the MLS Playoffs in nine consecutive years.

David also serves on the Advisory Board of Sports Innovation Texas (https://sportsinnovationtx.com), a new initiative realising the potential of Austin and Central Texas to be a leading global hub for sports innovation and technology.

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Our panel of specialist investors: Meredith McPherron (CEO & Managing Partner, DRIVE by Draft Kings), Jay Adya (Elysian Park Ventures) and Lance Dietz (Principal, KB Partners), share their expertise on what areas in sports tech and connected fitness they think will take off over the next few years, what they think is most overblown and what advice they have for startup founders looking to build relationships with VC’s.

Brought to you by Sports Tech World Series: https://sportstechworldseries.com/

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Will Ahmed is the Founder and CEO of WHOOP, the next generation wearable technology for optimizing human performance and health. WHOOP members range from professional athletes, fortune 500 CEOs, fitness enthusiasts, military personnel and healthcare workers. Whoop’s current valuation is $1.2 billion, joining the ranks of tech "unicorns". Will has raised more than $100 million from top investors and has an active advisory board that consists of some of the world’s most notable cardiologists, technologists, marketers, and designers. Will wrote “The Feedback Tool: Measuring Fitness, Intensity, and Recovery,” which sparked the underlying physiology and engineering for his work today.

Will was recently named to the 2020 Fortune 40 Under 40 Healthcare list and previously named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and Boston Business Journal 40 Under 40. In 2020, WHOOP was named Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company for Wellness. Before founding WHOOP, Ahmed was named a 2011 Harvard College Scholar for finishing in the top 10% of his class and a CSA Scholar Athlete; captaining the Harvard Men’s Varsity Squash Team.

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Moon Javaid is the Chief Strategy Officer of the San Francisco 49ers. This is Moon's eighth season with the 49ers and his current role oversees business intelligence, CRM and fan feedback; manages retail, mobile app, and concessionaire relationships; works on bids for large scale non-NFL events; supports the drive for local revenue; and aids other business aspects of the organization with strategic and analytical support.

Under Moon’s guidance, the 49ers built a data warehouse that processes over 3 million records per day, and launched the award-winning Executive Huddle, the first real-time analytics control room on NFL game days. Executive Huddle’s recent awards of note include being named the Leader in Innovation by Leaders in Sports, and Best Venue Tech by TheStadiumBusiness. Executive Huddle is also a finalist for Sports Business Journal’s Best in Sports Technology, to be announced later this year.

Moon has also collaborated with ticket operations to break NFL records for highest revenue in a regular-season game, and secured bids for WrestleMania 31 and the Gold Cup Final. Under his leadership, the organization has acquired the Emmy award-winning high school program Cal-Hi Sports and launched a sports medicine facility.

Previously, Javaid worked at Linden LLC, a healthcare-focused private equity fund and L.E.K. Consulting, a global management consulting firm. A Cleveland native, Javaid graduated from Northwestern University with degrees in Psychology and Economics and later earned his MBA from University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.

Shownotes: https://sportstechfeed.com/moon-javaid

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Meridith is the Founder and CEO of Nix, a biosensor startup, spun out of Harvard University. The initial product is a sweat sensor that informs athletes, soldiers, and laborers of their hydration status, sweat rate, electrolyte losses, and core body temperature in real-time.

A serial company starter, Meridith has worked closely with several Boston and New York-based venture capital firms in the creation of seven life science and consumer startups prior to Nix. Meridith sits on the board of several companies and non-profits including Girls on the Run of Greater Boston, Consumer Technology Association’s Health and Fitness Technology Division, and the Cambridge Friends School, of which she is an alumna.

Meridith is a college basketball player-turned-marathoner who has completed 9 marathons in the past 6 years, and is proud to have earned her Six Star Medal having run all the World Major Marathons. She received her A.B. from Bryn Mawr College where she received the Anna Pell Wheeler Prize for Mathematics, and her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Meridith is a Kauffman Fellow as well as a Harvard Business School Blavatnik Fellow.

Shownotes: https://sportstechfeed.com/meridith-cass

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What impact is big tech having on sports? How do FAANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) view the value of sports media rights deals? Are they here to disrupt the status quo or beat broadcasters at their own game? We dive into all this and more with Nick Meacham, Managing Director of SportsPro Media. Fuelled by an extensive background in the sports and media industries, Nick has spent the last 10 years developing SportsPro Media into the global leader in sports industry news and insights. With a distinct focus around media rights, broadcasting and technology, SportsPro’s audience of more than 1.5 million sports industry executives are supported by an events portfolio of conferences hosted in five countries across the globe. Nick’s expertise is built around the burgeoning digital and OTT landscape transforming sports consumption. He spends time advising sports industry stakeholders on how to tackle the sports broadcasting revolution. Nick also serves as an independent director of the British Volleyball federation.

Shownotes: https://sportstechfeed.com/nick-meacham

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Unprecedented times for sport has forced us to rethink what’s important whilst consolidating some simple truths often taken for granted. This Panel discussion, drawn from the recent Sports Tech World Series European Conference, focusses on production automation and connecting with remote basketball fans via the FIBA connected stadium, the incredible journey of the New Zealand Basketball League over the last 6 months and how forward-thinking combined with technology can drive remote engagement for fans, players, leagues and federations.

Featuring: Andrew Collins (Chief Product Officer | Synergy Sports), Jonas Curty (Head of Marketing, Communication & Events | Swiss Basketball), Justin Nelson (General Manager | NBL NZ) & Tim Kelly (CEO | 5Stream)

This episode is brought to you by Synergy Sports. Synergy provides an integrated suite of technology which enables teams and leagues to capture, analyze, produce, distribute and commercialize their data and video content. They operate in 41 countries around the world with over 500 FIBA Connected Stadiums as part of their partnership with FIBA, the world basketball governing body. In the US, Synergy Sports also serves every single NBA, G League, WNBA and NCAA Division I basketball team as well as over 270 NCAA Division I baseball teams and is now moving rapidly into other sports. Since 2019, Synergy Sports has aggregated a library of 64,524 basketball games around the world and 13,234 baseball games in the US.

Shownotes: https://sportstechfeed.com/

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Julie Johnson is Co-Founder & CEO of Armored Things, a Boston-based SaaS company using AI to transform physical security and operations for large venues and campuses. Armored Things is focused on the critical need to surface critical data points in real-time to venue security and operations teams.

Julie co-founded Armored Things after working at Qualcomm, where she was focused on cybersecurity and the Internet of Things for both the corporate venture capital arm and as a strategic liaison for the Bay Area research and development team. Previously, Julie held various positions across trading, investment management, and venture capital. She has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton, and Harvard Business School.

Shownotes: https://sportstechfeed.com/julie-johnson-roberts

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Katherine Rowe is data-driven sports strategist conducting research and strategic consulting for a range of sports properties and brands. The topic of today's discussion is centred on a research project she conducted with Professor Kirk Goldsberry (an ESPN NBA analyst and noted leader in the world of sports analytics) on understanding the makeup of the most valuable properties in sports — live game broadcasts — and to map out how these broadcasts vary across different sports.

Katherine is an MBA graduate from the McCombs Business School at University of Texas at Austin. During her time at UT she worked as a graduate research assistant for Professor Kirk Goldsberry. Katherine also worked across marketing and sales strategy for the University of Texas Longhorns and created a strategic roadmap for growth for executives of the NBA’s Summer League.

Previously Katherine served as an officer in the U.S. Army, responsible for mission-critical combat telecommunications in a number of front-line deployments. She continues to actively support transitioning military veterans for their next chapter of leadership by helping them gain admission to the best college or graduate school possible through Service to School. This is in addition to her own Bridging the Gap initiative aimed at increasing opportunities for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) in the sports industry, including a scholarship place to the annual Sloan MIT Sports Analytics Conference.

Shownotes: https://sportstechfeed.com/katherine-rowe

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Travis McDonough is the founder and CEO of Kinduct, an Athlete Management System (AMS) which collects data from external sources and automates certain reporting and alerts regarding human body performance and well-being. Kinduct is used by over 550 teams, leagues, athletic associations, performance centers, military and healthcare organizations around the world. Their clients include dozens of NHL, NBA, NFL and MLB teams, as well as Gatorade, Olympic sports associations, and enterprise healthcare partners.

Travis holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Kinesiology from Dalhousie University and a Doctor of Chiropractic degree. A health care practitioner, Travis has dedicated his entire career to his passion for sparking innovation and driving constant improvement in the sport, health, and wellness industries. His work in these fields has been widely recognized, earning numerous awards including Atlantic Canada’s Innovator of the Year, Halifax Business Person of the Year, Atlantic Business Magazine Top 50 CEOs (inducted into Hall of Fame in 2018), ITAC Ingenious Award, and The Experiential Learning Award via Game Changers Awards and Halifax Partnership.

Kinduct was recently acquired by mCube, a US-based technology company enabling the Internet of Moving Things (IoMT). This acquisition is the largest exit for a Canadian Sport Tech company in history, and one of the largest exists in Nova Scotia Tech History.

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Andy is Manager, Business Process Analysis at the Cleveland Cavaliers. During his time with the Cavs, Andy has led the execution of software implementations, designed process improvements and rollouts. All while spreading awareness for the Cavaliers Mousetrap team, a part of the organization’s business intelligence group, which was recently awarded the Ideascale Innovation Management Award for “Best Innovation Engagement Strategy”. With the Cav's focus shifting towards analytics, Andy aims to streamline processes based on data utilization.

Originally from Buffalo, New York, Andy joined the Cleveland Cavaliers as a Business Analyst during the 2016 NBA Finals, just in time to witness the greatest comeback in Finals history. Before relocating to Cleveland, he spent three years as Manager of Customer Experience with Yahoo Fantasy Sports. While there, his team deployed numerous enhancements to the Fantasy Sports platform to ensure users received an unrivalled experience. Andy received his Bachelor’s degree in Sport Management from SUNY Fredonia and is a Six Sigma Green Belt.

Shownotes: https://sportstechfeed.com/andy-olsson

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Dr Sarah Domone is the Lead Consultant for the English Institute of Sport (EIS) Sport Intelligence Team whose mission is to support Olympic and Paralympic sports in their use of performance data to maintain their world leading edge. A Sports Engineering graduate from the University of Bath, Sarah went on to complete a PhD in Biomechanics with the Centre for Sports Engineering Research at Sheffield Hallam University before working in the physical activity sector as the Data and Insight Manager at ukactive.

John Blenkharn joined the Sport Intelligence team at UK Sport as Programme Manager following the Rio Games in 2016. John is currently leading on a data knowledge building strategy across Olympic and Paralympic sports which seeks to equip performance staff with the tools and skills required to enhance an understanding of how data can inform decision-making. Prior to joining UK Sport, John worked in project management roles for Marks and Spencer, the United Nations Environment Programme and BAE System. Outside of work, John plays for the Warrington Wolves Physical Disability Rugby League team.

Shownotes: https://sportstechfeed.com/uk-sport

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Jarrod currently works as the Manager of Former Player Engagement with the Los Angeles Rams. In this role, he works to integrate former players as brand ambassadors into the overall marketing, sponsorship, and fan engagement strategy of the organization. Additionally, investing in the holistic development of former players through professional development and well-being initiatives.

A native of Columbus, Ohio, Jarrod Barnes has always looked to defy the odds. During his collegiate athletic career at The Ohio State University, Jarrod became the first student-athlete in the history of The Big Ten Conference to pursue a Ph.D. while on an active roster. Following his playing career, he joined the Ohio State Football coaching staff as an Intern Defensive Back’s Coach and would eventually transition into athletics administration at Clemson University, as the Assistant Director of Student-Athlete Development. Following his time at Clemson, Jarrod launched Prime U, a leadership development platform designed for athletes, coaches, and professionals in the workplace to develop more self-aware, effective, purposeful leaders.

Jarrod is also the Co-Founder of The Lab Community, an online community for sports professionals. Jarrod is also a mentor for sports technology startups through the leAD Sports Accelerator and on the Board of Directors for the Sports Business and Leadership Association, a non-profit organization that specializes in providing access to sports business careers for underserved populations.

Shownotes: https://sportstechfeed.com/jarrod-barnes

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Jim Garofalo is the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at KINEXON. KINEXON equips more than 75% of NBA teams with next level technology that assists with performance profiling, conditioning, training loads and injury management. The company pivoted during the COVID-19 pandemic to launch KINEXON SafeZone - a contact warning and contact tracing solution to combat the spread of COVID-19, which has been used by companies around the world, including all 32 NFL teams.

At KINEXON, Jim drives the market expansion into North America for professional clubs, leagues, sports organizations and media houses and establish successful sales partnerships. Jim’s experience in the sports marketing and sports performance landscape spans two decades with extensive experience in developing marketing strategies and executions that drive brand affinity and sales for some of the industry’s most trusted brands.

Prior to joining KINEXON, Jim was the Vice President Client Service for MKTG INC., a part of the Dentsu Aegis Network. In this role he led the Chicago office’s relationships with Dick’s Sporting Goods, Gatorade, NCAA and Performance Health’s Biofreeze brand. Under his direction, the team executed numerous award-winning campaigns. Before that, Jim worked for more than 9 years at PepsiCo’s Gatorade as a member of the Sports Marketing Team. Here, Jim implemented global marketing strategies for the Gatorade Sports Science Institute that connected athletes, teams, leagues and sports performance professionals with Gatorade’s science and product portfolio.

Shownotes: https://sportstechfeed.com/jim-garofalo

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Marilou McFarlane has worked passionately building sportstech businesses for much of the last decade and now consults for startups in the space as the Principal of SportsTechWorks. Her latest client is Mustard, a new sports performance startup which democratizes access to elite level coaching by offering the only motion analysis app providing same-session feedback, in addition to personalized instruction from the world’s best coaches. The app is powered by an AI platform built on 40 years of data from leading coach and former MLB pitcher Tom House.

Prior to her role at SportsTechWorks, Marilou was president of North America – Soccer for STATSports, and introduced the APEX Athlete Series consumer product to U.S. Soccer’s youth ecosystem of 4 million players. Prior to that role, she was CEO of venture-funded CoachNow (previously named Edufii) and guided this mobile platform for connected coaching to successful merger/acquisition in 2017.

Marilou has a passion for driving growth opportunities for women in sports both on and off the field. As founder and CEO of Vivo Girls Sports, Marilou and her team created a digital media property that was rapidly accepted globally by young women aged 13-24, Olympians and advertisers alike, and subsequently inspired the launch of espnW.

In late 2017 she founded the non-profit group Women in Sports Tech (WiST) with the mission to drive growth opportunities for women in the industry. Current partners include IBM Sports, Nike, the NBA, Catapult Sports, Spartan, and numerous private donors and foundations including the Mark Cuban Foundation.

A former UNC cross-country and 3:06 marathon runner, she is a natural and enthusiastic leader, as well as the happy wife of a fire captain and mother of 2 illustrious daughters, who each captained UNC women’s soccer championship teams and went on to play professionally, before heading to Harvard Med School, Stanford GSB and Microsoft.

Shownotes: https://sportstechfeed.com/marilou-mcfarlane

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Daniel is the Chief of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) at UEFA, leading a team of more than 80 people and an extensive third-party network of national and international suppliers and vendors. He joined UEFA 20 years ago and has held different jobs within the areas of ICT and Digital Media. Daniel has extensive experience in the delivery of ICT solutions thus enabling the operations of major Football competitions, including the UEFA Champions League and the last five UEFA European Championships, in areas ranging from Networking, Event Management and Digital Media.

During the last two European Championships, Daniel held a position in the tournament management team, playing a key part in ensuring decision making and issue solving at the highest level. In the last couple of years Daniel worked on optimising internal/external processes and significant cost efficiencies, while maintaining an above-average level of service for UEFA to its business partners and 55 member associations. The overall objective of ICT is to bring value to its stakeholders and help UEFA deliver the ultimate best service and experience during competitions.

Daniel is also part of the UEFA Digital Board and UEFA’s Innovation Hub looking at enabling the Digital Transformation of the organisation on all domains from B2B, B2E and B2C, whilst also part of challenging the normal delivery of football as we know it today. Daniel holds an Engineering degree and an MBA from the London Business School.

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Niharika is Head of Product and Tech for ONE Championship, a Singapore-based mixed martial arts (MMA), Muay Thai, and kickboxing sports media property, which was launched in 2011 by entrepreneur Chatri Sityodtong and former ESPN Star Sports senior executive Victor Cui. It’s Asia largest global sports media property with a broadcast to over 2.6 billion potential viewers across 150+ countries. Niharika leads the digital strategy for the company across its owned and operated assets.

An ex-McKinsey consultant, Niharika found her true calling in building and scaling businesses when she joined Treebo, a travel tech startup, in 2015. She has worked across strategy, revenue and product in her previous stints and is excited by the possibilities that technology and digital platforms bring to all three of those verticals.

At ONE Championship, she is leading the charge on revolutionizing the way fans interact with the company and helping build the ONE Super App into the most loved sports App in the world.

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Patrick Ward is the Director of Research and Development for the Seattle Seahawks where his role centers around data analysis on a variety of different topics for the team. Before joining the Seahawks, Patrick was a sport scientist within the Nike Sports Research Lab. He also founded Optimum Sports Performance in Tempe, Arizona, a strength and conditioning facility where he trained high school, collegiate, and professional athletes.

Patrick has been invited to present research and speak at conferences including MIT Sloan Analytics Conference, Casacadia Symposium of Statistics in Sport, World Congress of Science in Football, and NSCA National Conference. Research interests include training and competition analysis as they apply to athlete health, injury, and performance across a variety of sports. Patrick has a Ph.D. in Sports Science from Liverpool John Moores University and is a National Strength and Conditioning Association Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (NSCA-CSCS).

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As lockdowns lift and college students from across the US eye a return to class, student-athletes are also gearing up for what they hope is a return to competition. At this point in the year, it’s anyone’s idea if college sports will get a season but the smart money is indicating that play won’t return for the majority of sports until 2021. On this week's episode, Nate Brookreson shares how technology and data were used to remotely train student-athletes during the lockdown and how it's being used going forwards in the "new normal" of COVID-19 works outs.

Nate is the Assistant Athletic Director of Strength & Conditioning for Olympic Sports at North Carolina State. Nate’s primary training duties at NC State are with women’s basketball and swimming while supervising the implementation of training for over 500 student-athletes. Prior to NC State, Nate was the Director of Athletic Performance for Olympic Sports at the University of Memphis. While at Memphis, Nate worked primarily with men and women’s soccer, men and women’s golf and track & field sprinters while supervising training for the Olympic sports department.

Before heading to Memphis, Nate was the Director of Athletic Performance at Eastern Washington University, working primarily with football and volleyball while supervising the training of all EWU student-athletes. Additionally, Nate served as a student strength and conditioning coach at the University of Georgia, assisting with baseball, softball, swimming and diving and women’s tennis.

A native of Lacey, Washington, Nate earned his Bachelor’s degree from Central Washington University and Master’s degree from Eastern Washington University in Exercise Science. He is certified (CSCS) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association and (SCCC) the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association.

Special thanks to VALD Performance for their support of this week's episode.

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Andrew is currently the Director of Emerging Technology for AMB Sports and Entertainment which encompasses the Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta United FC, and Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Andrew is a technologist with a background in IoT and big data product development. His career has centered around technology, first in consulting, then building a start-up, and now as an innovator-in-residence for AMBSE.

Andrew got his start in tech entrepreneurship during his MBA, when he co-founded Aspirum Technologies. Later, he envisioned and commercialized many new products and features at Microsoft, including Windows Ink, Windows Focus Assistant, and Windows Timeline while on the Windows team, and Azure Sphere and Azure Time Series Insights while on the Azure IoT engineering team. Andrew is an Atlanta native, attending Georgia State University for his undergrad and Georgia Tech for his MBA and MS-CS.

Andrew shares how AMBSE is using technology for the safe return of fans to Mercedes-Benz Stadium with a "frictionless fan-experience".

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Melanie Strong is the Managing Partner at NEXT VENTŪRES, a new venture capital firm designed to maximize growth opportunities in the exploding sports, fitness, nutrition and wellness markets. Mel has spent most of her life in the sports industry and believes that access to a healthy and active lifestyle can transform culture. She spent over 17 years at Nike, leading international marketing teams across running, women’s, soccer and training. She worked on all of Nike’s digital sports and tracking products and was most recently Vice President and General Manager for their skateboarding business. She continues to serve as an advisor to Nike’s accelerator, Valiant Labs, sits on the board of performance brand PowerDot, and is an advisor for photography app VSCO.

Mel shares her perspectives on how the investment space has changed for the sports, fitness, nutrition and wellness markets since the COVID-19 pandemic; how these markets continue to blend and merge; key growth advice for Founders of their portfolio companies; and how constantly challenging biases and assumptions by bringing a fresh perspective to the world of VC can lead to better investment outcomes.

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Bryce Weiler is a co-founder for the Beautiful Lives Project and disability consultant for the Baltimore Orioles. Bryce was born four months premature and developed an eye condition called Retinopathy of prematurity that caused him to be blind. Bryce attended public school from elementary through his freshmen year of high school and completed his high school education at the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Indianapolis. Bryce’s passion for sports on the radio led him to commentate on radio sports broadcasts for the University of Evansville, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Sports Management and Communication, and Western Illinois University, where he earned a master’s degree in Sports Administration. After college, Bryce began developing programs for fans with disabilities. The first teams to join him in his work were the Baltimore Orioles and the New Britain Bees baseball teams.

There's a lot of focus on how to use technology to better engage fans but implicit in most of these discussions, and the accompanying technology innovations, is the focus on engagement for abled-bodied fans. But how can sports teams and leagues better cater to all of their fans, including those with disabilities? Bryce shares his unique perspective on how to disability should not be a barrier to sharing in the fundamental human experience of sports.

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Carlo is Group Chief Evangelist at Deltatre, a role designed to push boundaries and ensure innovation remains at the heart of everything Deltatre does, including their work across OTT platforms, linear broadcast and next-gen digital experiences for top teams and leagues, such as FIFA, UEFA, NFL, The Premier League, MLB, DAZN, BBC, Discovery, BT Sport and AT&T. Carlo’s been with Deltatre for over 32 years months serving in a series of technical roles throughout the organization including as CTO, Chief Product Officer and Chief Marketing Officer.

Sports are returning to play with a number of major differences. Most notably from a fan experience perspective is the limited amount, or complete lack, of fans allowed in stadiums during games. We’re also seeing altered schedules, with compressed seasons and competitions overlapping as they race to fill the available time before 2021 rolls around. Carlo shares how can technology be used to enhance the fan experience through this pandemic driven disruption of the status quo. He also shares more broadly on how sports rights-holders can respond and predict the digital disruption faced by the industry as fans expect to be able to consume what they want, when they want it and how they want it delivered.

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Janet Gibson is the CEO and Founder of SCORZ, global pioneers in large-scale multi-sensory sports fan engagement. Their immersive platform brings a new dimension to in-home audience engagement by amplifying campaigns and initiatives using integrated internet of things products and platform technology. Some of their products include the Budweiser smart scoring glass and the ice hockey smart scoring light which both react to events like team scoring moments or celebrations, to bring the stadium experience into fans living room.

Janet has 25 years leading manufacturing and export businesses from growth and expansion through to successful M&A. Commencing in 2015, she lead the BuzzConnect Sports Technology business, driving growth of IoT Fan Engagement products in market. Janet purchased the BuzzConnect business in 2019 and established Scorz to expand on their capability as the pioneers and global leader for in-home and in-stadium sports fan engagement solutions.

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Franco Segarra is the Head of Data/Analytics, Ticketing and Fan Experience at Valencia CF, one of Spain's most successful and oldest football clubs. He is responsible for all data insights of the club while also managing tickets/pricing, fan experience, and customer support departments from a data-driven angle. Franco has contributed significantly to the club’s ambitious digital transformation project and at the same time extended help in steering several strategic business decisions. A former bank manager and Chief Technology Officer, Franco has over 12 years of professional experience in different sectors, but with a continued focus on applying technology and performing digital transformations in various businesses.

On this week's episode, we unpack the data-led digital transformation of Valencia CF including: updating data processes vs. data culture within the club; the process of going cashless in their 97-year-old stadium; the role of the club's website as the external face of the digital transformation and why it was honoured by the prestigious Webby Awards; the latest innovations in fan experience, ticketing and business intelligence on the horizon.

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On this week's show, we're joined by Adrian Montgomery CEO of Enthusiast Gaming, one of the world’s largest publicly traded esports companies, and former NHL Team President. Drawing on his unique experience as a leader across traditional sports and esports, we dive into how esports, gaming, sports and entertainment continue their convergence; the future of privatization when it comes to 3rd party data ownership in gaming and entertainment; and what that means for brands and advertisers trying to reach the coveted Gen Z.

More about Adrian Montgomery

Prior to leading Enthusiast Gaming, Adrian served as President and CEO of Canucks Sports and Entertainment, one of Canada’s premier sports and entertainment organizations. He is the former president of Tuckamore Capital Management, a conglomerate with over $700 million of annual revenue, and was also the former CEO of QM Environmental, one of Canada’s largest contracting companies. Adrian has been active in the political process throughout his career and has served as a political advisor to Leaders at all levels of government. Adrian also a member of the New York State Bar Association.

More about Enthusiast Gaming

Enthusiast Gaming operating across three main pillars: Media, Events and Esports teams. The digital media platform includes 100+ gaming related websites and 900 YouTube channels. Enthusiast’s esports division, Luminosity Gaming, consists of 7 professional esports teams under ownership and management, including the Vancouver Titans Overwatch team and the Seattle-based Call of Duty team. The entertainment division owns and operates Canada’s largest gaming expo, Enthusiast Gaming Live Expo, EGLX, and the largest mobile gaming event in Europe, Pocket Gamer Connects. Collectively, the integrated ecosystem reaches over 200 million gaming enthusiasts on a monthly basis.

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This week we are joined by Dr. Julian Tan Head of Digital Business Initiatives & Esports at Formula 1. Julian’s responsible for leading Formula 1's digital strategy, transformation & growth, including F1's global esports business, with the aim of redefining how fans engage with the sport through digital and esports.

Prior to this, Julian was a Senior Consultant at global management consulting firm, The Boston Consulting Group. Here he helped some of the world's largest and most important organizations spearhead their commercial strategies and digital transformations. Julian holds first-class bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Oxford and a PhD in the micromechanics of carbon fibre laminates from the University of Cambridge.

This discussion was originally recorded as part of the Sports Tech World Series - European Conference 2020. This year's Conference has gone virtual with 6 micro-events over 6 weeks starting Friday 5th June. It's free to register and you'll have access to 18 hours of content from some of the brightest minds in European sports innovation.

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We're joined by Mike Downey, Principal Architect of Sports Technology at Microsoft. He oversees the engineering planning and execution of Microsoft’s brand partnerships in sports, eSports, and entertainment working with large sports leagues and franchises including NBA, NFL, PGA Tour, NASCAR, ESPN and others. Prior to joining Microsoft, he spent nine years at Adobe primarily working on the Flash product family.

Upon announcing NBA's multi-year technology deal with Microsoft, Commissioner Adam Silver stated: “This partnership with Microsoft will help us redefine the way our fans experience NBA basketball." Mike share's how this partnership came to fruition and the elements of this new agreement he believes will have the biggest impact on the fan experience. Mike also shares his perspectives on the rapid growth in esports and how this can be sustained as traditional sports resume.

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Tim Tubito is the Director, Event Presentation & Content at the National Football League. On this week's episode, we discuss how the NFL develops and delivers on ever-evolving technology, such as in the Super Bowl mixed reality presentation and the pivot to a Virtual Draft, to deliver an exceptional fan experience for the world's largest sporting league.

Tim is an Emmy award-winning producer and director with over 15 years of production and game presentation experience with the New York Jets, Madison Square Garden Company and most recently the NFL. In his current role, Tim oversees Event Presentation and Content for all of the NFL’s major tent pole events including the Super Bowl, The NFL Draft, NFL Kickoff as well as Game Presentation Strategy across all 32 clubs. Prior to this Tim was at the Madison Square Garden Company where he was responsible for games and events for the New York Knicks. In his this role, he was in charge of game scripting, as well as managing all event activity, including live music, arena lighting, entertainment coordination, and partner/marketing integration. He spent 12 years with the New York Jets in several different roles including overseeing football video operations then switching to the business side with responsibility for content, event presentation, virtual and augmented reality initiatives and experiential production.

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This week we're joined by Dr Laila Mintas to understand the role of technology in growing and securing the multi-billion dollar sports betting market. Including how the industry has coped with the COVID19 shutdown and how tech can be used to safeguard against fake "ghost games" being run by criminal organizations in lieu of real events.

Dr Mintas is a an expert consultant in the sports betting, digital sports and fan engagement industry . She was named a 2019 SBJ Power Player in Sports Betting and one of Business Insider´s Leaders of the Sports Betting Industry. Prior to establishing her independent consultancy, Laila oversaw all US operations for the sports data provider, Sportradar. Laila has also served as the Head of Legal and Head of International Development for FIFA’s Early Warning System (FIFA EWS) and Director of Sports Integrity at CONCACAF, the governing body for Soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean being responsible for all 41 member countries. Since 2009, she has published a significant number of law articles and has lectured at the Humboldt University of Berlin and Columbia University in New York where she is a Professor for Global Sports Law.

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On today's show, we dive into the role technology plays in engaging and managing volunteers at large sporting and mass participation events. The crucial role of volunteers in the success of large scale events is often overlooked and certainly underappreciated under. Shannan Gove (Director andd Co Founder at Rosterfy) shares his perspectives on why it's incredibly important as sports look to return from shutdown, they also consider how they can engage their workforce to return with them.

Shannan is an expert in large scale paid and volunteer workforce operations. Since starting Rosterfy in 2010, Shannan has a proven track record working with the worlds largest events including the last four Super Bowls, numerous FIFA World Cups and mass participation events across 5 continents such as the London Marathon, Spartan Race and Ironman triathlons.

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This week we’re joined by David Michael, the former Chief Technology Officer for the XFL. Unfortunately, the XFL was one of the early victims of the COVID-19 sports shutdown, ceasing all operations and subsequently filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy after only 5 weeks (20 games) into its inaugural season. However what it managed to achieve in that short period was impressive and holds lessons for surviving sports teams and leagues in how to use technology to engage fans in new and innovative ways. During his time at the XFL, David was responsible for all technology in the league and across its 8 teams. This included leading a team of 150 people covering digital products, football tech and enterprise technology. Prior to this, he was the Chief Information Officer for The Madison Square Garden Company. As the executive responsible for technology he led enterprise wide customer facing digital products as well as back office tech functions. Shownotes and more episodes: https://sportstechfeed.com/

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On this week's show, we’re going big picture looking at macro trends in the sports technology industry. Topics covered include: the rise of the quantified self; smart stadiums as precursors to smart cities; the convergence of wearables and video analytics; technology innovation and adoption post coronavirus shutdown.

Martin is Principal Consultant at Chemneera, a leading sports technology global advisory firm, with more than 20 years experience in the sports and recreation, construction and specialty chemicals industry in the areas of product development, process engineering and research and development commercialisation. He sits on the Advisory Board of the International Sports Technology Association and the Australian Sports Technologies Network.

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Discussion with Danielle Gescheit (Head of Professional Tennis Operations, Tennis Australia); Dr Tannath Scott (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of New England / NSW Rugby League); Kim Crane (National High Performance Director, Surfing Australia); Tania Gallo (Head Sports Scientist, North Melbourne Football Club); and William Strange (CEO, SPT).

On today’s show, we’re discussing how science and technology can be applied to get the most from athletes and coaches across a range of sports and environments. Our experts share their own definitions of high performance and what the most successful adoption of technology has been towards building a high performance culture in their organization. They share how to navigate the dysfunctional marriage of the art and science of coaching, including different approaches for working with "old school" gut coaches vs "new school" data-driven leaders. We round out the conversation with a look into trends, both positive and negative, in the field of sports science.

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Taylor is the Chief Performance Engineer at Statespace, a neuroscience and AI gaming company developing holistic training tools to increase human performance, with a particular focus on cognitive output in esports and gaming. Prior to this, Taylor held several human performance roles with collegiate sports teams and the NFL as a Strength and Conditioning coach with the San Francisco 49ers. During his stint at the 49ers, Taylor was in charge of the physical preparation and rehabilitation of the players as well as developing and implementing the team’s nutrition and sports science/wellness program.

On today's show we learn more about Taylor’s very unique career path and how he's bringing the science and skills from traditional sports performance into esports. We discuss the notion of pro esports players as "athletes", understand why the current career of a pro esports player is only 2-4 years, and what then can be done to increase players performance and longevity. We also look at how cognitive performance training can be applied to traditional sports and other areas such as stroke recovery.

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Sam is Head of International Business Development at Sina Sports, one of the largest sports digital media platforms in China. Sina Sports are the exclusive Chinese broadcast partners for over 90 sports properties, including the European Champions League, UFC, Wimbeldon and PGA Tour. In conjunction with their sister company Weibo, China’s largest social media platform, Sina Sports also operates social media accounts with more than 100 million followers. They've also expanded into offline sporting events including Asia’s largest FIBA-certified 3 on 3 basketball tournament.

Sam shares his insights on the Chinese sports ecosystem, including the "pyramid of fan engagement" and how Sina Sports use a combination of digital, social and offline to service these different user bases. Sam also discusses how China is recovering from coronavirus shutdown and what that could mean for sports reopening domestically and around the world.

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Discussion with Matt Archambault (Head of Partnerships & Business Development, North America, Riot Games), Greg Stangel (Chief Revenue Officer, Misfits Gaming), Justin Varghese (North America Marketing Manager, Dreamhack) and Nicola Piggot (Co-Founder, The Story Mob).

On today’s show, we’re discussing one industry sector that’s inadvertently benefited from the global shutdown of sporting leagues and the increasing number of stay-at-home and social distancing orders: esports. The continued upward of trajectory of esports, even in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, presents a unique opportunity for stakeholders in traditional sports, including teams, athletes and their partner brands, to fill the void for fans affected by the shutdown as well as connecting with a new, younger audience.

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Julian is Head of Sports (London) for Mills & Reeve, one of the UK's leading sports law practices, acting for some of the biggest names in the industry including Premier League Clubs, National Sporting Bodies, individual Athletes as well as broadcasters, marketing agencies and brands. Julian advises these sports industry clients on a wide range of commercial legal matters, in particular broadcast/media rights distribution, sponsorship rights, event staging and sports technology, including start-ups.

On today's episode, we discuss the legal ramifications of the widespread cancellation or postponement of sports leagues and competitions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss potential solutions for rights holders, broadcasters and down-stream companies, as well as what role technology can play in helping the industry recover. We also look into Julian's work with the London Sports Tech Network and advice for growing local sports technology ecosystems.

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Richard is CEO and Founder of Seven League, a digital consultancy focusing on sports with clients including FIFA, NBA, FC Barcelona and the Premier League. A former journalist instrumental in the 1997 launch of BBC News Online, Richard spotted the opportunity for sport to use digital to become more creatively valuable and commercially viable whilst serving as Manchester City’s first Head of Digital.

On today's episode, Richard is in conversation with Umberto Righetti (Chief Strategy Officer, Atrium Sports) discussing how digital transformation is impacting all aspects of sporting organisations. He also shares similarities he’s seen between digital disruption in the music industry and how learnings from that can apply to sports today.

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Roi is the COO and the Co-Founder of Pico - Get Personal, a SaaS platform that helps sports teams (including the LA Clippers, St Louis Blues and FC Bayern Munchen) to build 1-on-1 relationships with their fans by making it easy to communicate and connect with fans via social media. They utilize AI and purpose-built chatbots to make the process more efficient for the teams and more personal for the fans when interacting on their preferred social media platform.

On today's episode, we discuss the importance for sports teams to join the dots between "unknown" fans on third party social media platforms into "known" fans captured on the team’s internal database. We also explore Roi's unusual entrepreneurial journey from local bar owner to the world of international sports.

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Christian is Chief Technology Officer for Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC) and Banc of California Stadium. He's responsible for defining the technical vision of the organization, developing the strategy around the use of technology throughout operations, and managing the implementation of technology across the enterprise.

On today’s episode we discuss how in a town famous for traffic and entertainment, LAFC are not necessarily competing against other teams in the area but the city itself. Which means the focus is all about making the customer’s experience as frictionless as possible. Christian shares some of the advanced tech they're using to make this frictionless experience a reality including biometric sensors and cutting edge high-speed fibre infrastructure.

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Tim is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Stadia Ventures, a global Sports Innovation Hub (including accelerator and venture fund) for early-stage investment in sports and esports. They have 40 portfolio companies since their launch in 2015 which have gone on to raise over $53M (including 5 exits). Tim is also a Senior Adjunct Professor at Saint Louis University where he teaches Undergrads and Masters students in one of the top-ranked Entrepreneurship program in the US.

On today's episode, we explore the investment trends Tim has seen over the last five years, including the rise of esports and the globalisation of sports capital. We also discuss the essential attributes Tim and the Stadia team look for when making investments in startup founders.

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Sam James is Director of Europe and Co-Founder of VALD Performance, a sports technology company that aims to provide sports scientists, physiotherapists and conditioning coaches unparalleled insights into their players’ performance and injury risk. Over 500 Elite sporting teams, performance centres and research institutions around the world rely on the VALD Performance Athlete Testing Systems for screening, monitoring, rehabilitating and training their athletes. In today's episode we discuss, the different technology testing solutions they use and how they were developed; the trend in computer vision and camera technology overtaking physical performance testing; and advice for developing a global business in the sports performance space.

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Helen is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Stats Perform, overseeing Artificial Intelligence, Innovation, Global Engineering, Design and Data Production teams. Helen joined Stats Perform in 2018 with over 22 years of experience as a technology strategist and thought leader, most recently serving as the CTO of JPMorgan Chase’s Commercial Banking division.

In this episode, we discuss the fundamentals of AI and how its application to sports data will change everything from draft decisions all the way to how new generations of fans consume and control sports content.

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Troy is the Head of High Performance for US Ski & Snowboard where he leads on all aspects of high performance in supporting U.S. Ski & Snowboard athletes, including most recently in winning 15 medals (7 Golds) at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games. Troy is responsible for providing strategic and operational leadership to over 30 practitioners in all the Sports Science/Technology, Sports Medicine and Sports Education departments. On today's episode, we discuss how the team integrates technology, including neurocognitive assessments and virtual reality, to solve the unique issues in the inhospitable and everchanging environment of snow sports.

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Tinus is CEO and Co-Founder of Fancam, the ultimate crowd selfie, helping brands and teams connect with their fans through super high-resolution whole stadium photos. Their clients include the Superbowl, Stanley Cup, Indy 500 and Rugby World Cup. We discuss how Fancam started as a fan engagement tool but evolved into fan analytics tool telling teams more about who’s actually in their stadium and how they’re interacting.

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Adam spent seven years as a sports lawyer managing player contracts, transfers, and litigating before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. In 2017 he transferred these professional legal skills to the burgeoning esports ecosystem. Using his own first-hand experience as a professional gamer in the “Wild West” of sports, Adam focussed on digitising contracts and automating payments for competitors. Adam discusses the future of professional esports and the convergence of esports with traditional sports.

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The sports betting industry is estimated to grow to $500+ billion within the US market alone. This week we explore how technology is being applied to accelerate the growth of sports betting with Nathan Rothschild (GTG Network), Niki Metzgar-Schall (Sportradar) and Wayne Kimmel (SeventySix Capital). You'll learn what tech underpins in sports betting ecosystem including data collection, data analytics, media and broadcasting; how tech is being applied to ensure integrity; and where venture capital investments are being made in the highest growth areas of the sports betting industry. This panel discussion was recorded live in October 2019 at the USA Sports Tech Conference as part of the Sports Tech World Series.

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Umberto is Chief Strategy Officer at Atrium Sports, a company he co-founded with the aim of providing sports with a one-stop shop for technology solutions that create new content, engage fans and open further commercial opportunities to grow the sport. Umberto's journey in sports tech is a classic 20-year overnight success story. It began with a voluntary role at his son's local football team and led to work with FIFA and the basketball equivalent, FIBA. On today's episode, we discuss the "Connected Stadium" and how technology automation is enabling sports of all levels to better capture, produce, enhance and distribute their in-game video and data.

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Peter is the Co-Founder of Tonsser, a Danish football performance app for unsigned youth players looking to be discovered by professional teams. In just three years, Tonsser’s app has acquired over 1M+ football playing-users and is the largest youth football database in Europe. It's been described as the LinkedIn of football and utilises individually sourced and community validated data to uncover the next generation of footballers.

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As the communications manager of New Zealand Rugby League, Caley was frustrated with what he saw as huge limitations around how teams and leagues could make their athletes accessible and get their stories told. So he founded the sports tech startup Blinder to unlock the storytelling potential of high-performance teams whilst respecting the privacy of the athlete.

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How real-time basketball data analytics is a game changer for coaches, players and fans with Davyeon Ross, Co-Founder and President of ShotTracker.

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Georgie is a Research Scientist at Orreco working with a range of Olympic and professional sporting teams including the Dallas Mavericks and the US Women's National Team, recent FIFA World Cup Champions. She also leads the science behind the Female Athlete Programme and FitrWomam and FitrCoach Apps.

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Michael is the Chief Technology Officer for the PGA European Tour and Ryder Cup. His responsibilities include technology, digital, data and data management across the Tour’s 47 golfing tournaments held annually in 30 countries.

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Tom leads the Elite Performance Solutions division for Platypus Neuro, which provides state-of-the art neurocognitive assessment and training programs to professional sports teams and military operator communities.

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