SportsTech in June — A summary

Fitness startups keep collecting money

Another month has passed in a year that will break all records when it comes to SportsTech funding. In the midst of it all is the well-known fitness theme with a range of new investment rounds. The NFT craze has cooled down a bit, as it seems that rights holders are analysing which concepts work and which not (more content on NFTs in sports on niftysports.co). Instead we’ll have a quick look on some team sports related news. Also the SportsTech ecosystem with its innovation initiatives went with less announcements as we are entering vacation season.

🏃 Fitness startups score big time

We keep stressing how much investment is pouring into SportsTech startups in 2021 after a year in which investors have rather been on the cautious side. And the one theme that keeps standing out from the pack is fitness, especially in the month of June, in which the top 6 FitnessTech deals combined for close to $600m:

💵 Gympass raises $220m in Series E round from SoftBank and others

💶 Urban Sports Club receives €80m investment

🏦 Fight Camp boxing training system secures $90m funding

💳 CureFit gets $75m investment from Tata

🤑 Fitness coach platform Lenus gets $50m from EQT Ventures

🥊 Liteboxer gets $20m for ‘Peloton for boxing’ solution​

Two areas that got multiple deals are the aggregators Gympass and Urban Sports Club, who offer memberships and digital classes to their customers, and the ‘Peloton for boxing’ companies Fight Camp and Liteboxer. Seems like we moved on from ‘Peloton for rowing’ to the next sport ;)

👀 An eye on team sports

When looking at the other interesting news from June we’ve realised that the underlaying theme is team sports, even though the type of announcements varies:

💲 Sportradar with traditional IPO instead of SPAC

💸 SIGNA Sports United going for $3.2b IPO at NYSE

🤝 Catapult Sports acquires data analytics firm SBG

💰 GumGum rebrands to Relo Metrics after $75m round from Goldman Sachs

⚽ TOCA Football raises $40m round for Topgolf-like concept

📱 Buzzer with $20m round for live streaming app​

Three of the above news cover the area of analytics, with the Sportradar IPO, the acquisition by Catapult Sports and the rebranding/investment round of GumGum. The second big IPO, ecommerce giant SIGNA Sports United, covers multiple sports, with team sports being one of them. Buzzer, the innovators in streaming highlight clips from games, secure a good invest after closing lots of content deals. And then there’s TOCA Football who’s building tech-supported entertainment centers to gamify the already beautiful game for everyone.

🚀 The ecosystem keeps it low

In the first months of the year we have seen multiple announcements of big brands and other players about their respective startups initiatives, probably more than ever before. That has cooled down a bit in June as programs are either in full work mode or coming to an end before the summer kicks in. However, there is still some news we’ve come across in this area:

🏀 Euroleague Basketball announces winning startups in FanXP challenge

⭐ Techstars Sports accelerator announces new cohort

For the second half of 2021 we expect in-person events to pick up steam again, including the usual startup pitches and competitions. We do look forward to see which companies will be put in the spotlight!

🧹 Finishing up

And that is it, another article in our monthly series that looks back on what happened in the world of SportsTech. The next one will be published in the first week of August. In the meantime make sure to check out our other content:

• Industry-leading reports (Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, Venture Capital, Football, Fitness)
• The “SportsTech Allstars” podcast
• Our blog with more articles
• Monthly newsletter
• SportsTech database
• LinkedIn group “Global SportsTech Network”

And have a look at Hello SportsTech, where we showcase cool, new SportsTech apps & devices and present the latest top news.

Have a great day!

Benjamin Penkert is the Founder of Berlin based SportsTechX — Data & insights about startups and innovation in sports. You can get in touch via LinkedIn, Twitter or email.