A look at Euroleague Basketball’s Fan Experience Challenge
The premier European basketball competition keeps pushing for innovation
The last week of February brought us to Barcelona for Euroleague Basketball’s 2020 FanXP Innovation Challenge as part of the Future of Sports Summit presented by Euroleague Basketball, N3XT Sports, and La Salle-URL. The day served as a showcase of innovation specifically focused on the fan experience and paired with insightful discussions surrounding the future of sport. It was a particularly exciting day for SportsTech startups participating in the challenge and those eager to hear from them.
The pitch competition served as an opportunity for a selection of 10 finalists to showcase their companies and highlight enhancements to the fan experience as well as expansions on revenue opportunities for sports organizations. The winner would be presented with several unique opportunities including mentoring sessions with Euroleague Basketball executives, private networking opportunities with sports professionals and jury members, potential investment opportunities and investor meetings, as well as the chance to test their product at the 2020 Euroleague Final Four in Cologne.
Startups were encouraged to apply for the competition if their solution fell into one of three categories; Broadcast-related Fan Engagement, In-arena Fan Engagement and/or Smart Arenas solutions, or Fan Engagement through Digital Platforms. The final 10 companies were then selected by a mixed committee of sports and technology experts including Stina Lundgren, 2019 Program Manager of SPIN Accelerator Sweden, Sree Varma, Founder and CEO at iSportconnect, Luis Vicente, Group CEO at Eleven Sports and Dídac Lee, Co-Founder at Galdana Ventures.
The startups
Here are the 10 finalists that were selected to pitch:
Edisn (India) is an AI powered fan engagement platform with state-of-the-art player recognition technology and contextual content delivery.
Piing (UK) is a totally new idea for event interaction. Get the whole room playing, shouting and interacting, instantly. Piing operates as a digital fan engagement platform for stadium-sized crowds.
Pressenger (Hungary) is an innovative mobile notification technology that lets you send animated notification bubbles directly to the locked screen of your users.
SeatServe (US) provides venues with the technology and infrastructure to improve the fan purchasing experience and increase food, beverage and merchandise revenue.
Stadiugraph (Italy) offers real time choreography events for sport fans by using the app, where fans can suggest a message or an elaborated custom designed choreography.
StriveCloud (Belgium) helps companies level up engagement and retention, by plugging-in gamification mechanism into online experiences, and motivate target audience to take actions that support business goals.
VICI TV (US) empowers passionate communities that are fragmented by distance to share live experiences together. Through a global network of connected TVs, VICI gives soccer teams unprecedented access to their global fanbases, personalizing experiences to specific fan groups.
VOGO (France) develops, markets and distributes live & replay, audio and video solutions for spectators and pros in sports venues. The company also provides professional audio communication systems for the industry and services sectors.
Watafan (Spain) produces digital and autographed trading cards that protect the rights of the content creator.
ybVR (US) is a company that markets immersive streaming video experiences for virtual reality glasses. They offer a complete experience of immersive video of high quality and in real time, in which the user can live a unique and intense experience from home.
And the winners are…
The winner of “best pitch” went to SeatServe for their presentation on the day. But out of a diverse group of startups, the jury’s pick for overall winner ultimately went to Edisn. Congrats to both winners! All of the companies that presented did a fantastic job showcasing their work.
Panel discussions
Following the pitches, we heard from two thought-provoking panels before the awards were presented. The first panel was focused on Disruptive Innovation in Sports where we heard from Stina Lundgren along with, Jordi Ferré, Co-founder and CEO at Kamleon, Miguel Ángel Heras, Head of Marketing and Communication at Roca, Alex Ferrer, Senior Director for Marketing and Communication at Euroleague Basketball, and moderator Mounir Zok, CEO at N3XT Sports.
Next, Mounir Zok and Luis Vicente were joined by Simone Tomassetti, Head of Sports Partnerships for Southern Europe at Twitter and Laura Louisy, Vice President — Rights Acquisition at DAZN, to lead a discussion all about The Fan of the Future.
Spain is always worth a trip
All in all, it was a great event with an even better group of innovators and industry leaders discussing SportsTech and fan engagement. Spain is certainly an important hub in Europe, serving as a great host for events focused on the industry. Keep an eye out for our European SportsTech Report 2020 to learn more about the innovation coming out of the region and beyond. Also make sure to explore our comprehensive database at SportsTechDB.com to take a deeper dive into all things SportsTech in the global ecosystem.
Benjamin Penkert is the Founder of Berlin based SportsTechX — Data & insights about SportsTech startups and the surrounding ecosystem. You can get in touch via Linkedin, Twitter or email.
