SportsTechX in 2022
A bit late in the day to say Happy New Year but certainly never too late to wish everyone a fantastic 2022! Team SportsTechX is particularly excited for this year since it’s a bit of a landmark for us, we turn 5 in June (Woohoo!). We’ll save the ‘thank yous’ and ‘shout outs’ for the actual birthday celebrations, which hopefully won’t be virtual 🍻 🤞
A lot has happened in SportsTech since we started up in 2017, which of course we have covered in much depth in our latest Global SportsTech VC Report published late last year. 2021 was a phenomenal year for SportsTech, smashing records with nearly $12b in investment! For perspective that is a growth of 275% since the humble beginnings of 2017 where investment was at $3.1b. We could not be more excited to be part of such a fast growing industry.
What’s New at SportsTechX
To keep pace, there’s quite a lot we have planned for this year. Since 5 is the magic number, here are five updates that we can already share.
#1: Goodbye HST (for now), Hello New Content: If you are a follower of our other property Hello SportsTech, I’m sorry but we have some bad news. As fun as it was testing out a bunch of cool new products in SportsTech, putting out 2 videos a week was too much to manage for us with all the other work we have going on. 51 product reviews videos and 43 HST Live shows later, we are going to take a break from publishing videos on the HST channel. However the weekly live show covering the latest in SportsTech news will continue at a new location, last week was Episode #1 of STX Weekly so be sure to check that out. The rest of our content — reports, database, podcast, newsletter and regular social media updates — will continue, with some tweaks to make them more interesting.
#2: New Investor Newsletter: Speaking of newsletters, we’re also launching a new newsletter format, focussed exclusively on investment in SportsTech. You’ll find monthly updates of some industry snapshots we provide in our reports, news and insights on latest deals, startups looking for funding and other updates. Sign up here if interested or if you’re a startup interested in being featured, drop an email.
#3: New Workshops: We get these types of requests a lot so would like to make it official — Yes, we do workshops. These can range from a variety of formats — from 1 hour to ½ or 1 day to longer engagements — based on requirements. Typically these cover:
★ Overview of SportsTech: Walking through our now ubiquitous Framework to look at the industry landscape then diving into the numbers and latest trends.
★ Deep dives into new topics (eg: NFTs): Going beyond the buzzwords to understand what is really happening from a global perspective.
By the way if you want to know more about NFTs in sports, you should really sign up for our Nifty Sports newsletter.
★ Connecting with startups: From setting up a full fledged innovation program to creating a simple shortlist of best startups to engage with, we can help.
Reach out here if this is what you’re looking for.
#4: STX Connect: Speaking of startups and requests we get a lot, here’s another thing we’re making official. Yes, we help startups with fundraising. This is something we’ve been doing behind the scenes for a while now, connecting startups to investors or with organisations to run pilots. Now we’re just going to officially work with select startups to help them on their journey. We’re in the process of finalising details and will launch this property soon but if this sounds interesting, here’s where you can reach out.
#5: Major partnership announcement: Hate to be a tease but this is actually a big one. We’re going to be working a lot closer with long time partner SIGNA Sports United. Details to be announced shortly ;)
Plenty more to come
Those are the 5 big ones but rest assured there will be lots more to come from us over the course of the year. Content, reports, projects or funding news, Team STX has got you covered. See you in ‘22 ✌️
Rohn Malhotra is a Co-Founder at Berlin based SportsTechX — Data & insights about SportsTech startups and the surrounding ecosystem. You can get in touch via LinkedIn or email.
