Big Changes Are Coming

One more day til’ the weekend! You know what that means - Welcome back to The Sports Road! Laughs, disappointments, and cringes – in all honesty we’re probably a bit like your favourite team!

Here's what we got for ya today:

• Southampton Are Changing The Game

• Apple x The EPL

• AI, Welcome to The WNBA

• Usyk’s Big News

Most valuable public market sports teams

Let's get into it!

Well, You Only Live Once…

Launching the Future of Football challenge, Southampton are planning to do BIG things…

Partnering with the Sport Republic and YOLO, the club is planning to move ahead of the game in the Sport Tech world.

With tech incubators seemingly the new biggest craze in the world of Sport – other than at Barcelona – this is one of the first times we’ve seen something of the sort in top European Football leagues. So what’s going on?

In a four week long virtual program, companies will have the opportunities to test and display their products to the club and other decision makers. This is what we know so far:

• Those participating will consist of Sport Tech and Web3 companies

• Originally 260 participants applied from over 40 countries

• Solutions will be picked in accordance with club values and vision

• As well as a commercial relationship with Southampton, teams are eligible to win a £100k discretionary prize pool for post-program solution development.

Languishing at rock bottom of the Premier League, any little bit will help the Saints!

A Matter of Time

It’s no secret that Tech giant Apple have got the Sports fever. It feels as though every week there’s a new multi-million dollar investment in the industry.

Whether it be their $2.5 billion deal with the MLS or AppleTV specials such as Ted Lasso, and more recently, their docu-series on Real Madrid, Apple have obviously seen serious benefits from their work in Sport.

So, the question stands: What now?

Well, this one could be big. Really big.

Here at The Sports Road we haven’t been shy in saying what we think about the current state of Premier League broadcasting… It’s inconvenient, difficult to navigate, expensive and – even with all those – you still may not be able to watch your favourite team!

That may be changing, though…

With reports swirling that Apple is increasingly keen on bidding for the English Football streaming rights, fans’ consumption of the beautiful game may change forever.

With people unhappy and the current £5.12 billion deal up in 2025, there’s no reason to see why it can’t happen.

Basing a potential system off of what the current AppleTV MLS pass looks like, here’s what we *ideally* could expect:

• A subscription based streaming service

• A platform that would feature all available EPL and EFL games (unlike now)

If done correctly, this could be a technological change that would change English Football forever and allow fans much easier access to watch their favourite games. If not, unfortunately, there could just be yet ANOTHER service we need to deal with…

It's GameOn

Look, you’re reading The Sports Road… it was only a matter of time before you had your daily dose of AI news. Did you really think that we were going to go through an entire newsletter without mentioning it?!?!

No, but really. As much as we appreciate AI, we love a good partnership. This is a bit of both… So with that, here’s what we’re talking about:

This week, GameOn, an AI powered fan engagement platform, struck a deal with the WNBA. Already working with a number of teams in the NBA, this is what GameOn specialises in.

• Integrating AI chat features into pre-existing digital platforms to engage with fans

• Help in the distribution of tickets

• Help administer game-day logistics

• Improve fan experience

With the WNBA being a leader in the growth of women’s Sport, this deal seems like a no brainer. As AI powered chat systems work to help engage newer fans, the league may experience even more rapid growth.

Initially working with the Las Vegas Aces and the Indiana Fever, we’re sure to see many more deals made in the league…

Let's Get Ready to Rumble

Oleksander Usyk - a name which, in the last couple of weeks, seems to have been in the news for all the wrong reasons…

Although apparently not by much fault of his own, he and Tyson Fury have recently fumbled one of the biggest Boxing bouts that could be put on. Classic Boxing 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

But hey, who knows. Maybe this will be a turning point. What, you ask?

Well, the WBA, WBO, and IBF World Heavyweight Champion has started his own Boxing Blockchain platform, Ready to Fight.

This is how it works:

• The platform is co-founded by Oleksandr Usyk and Sergey Lapin, the Sports Director of the Boxers team.

• The goal is to provide boxers with easier access to training and help build their boxing careers.

• Ready to Fight offers tools to help boxers find sparring partners, opponents, agents, and contracts.

• The platform allows boxers to track and share their progress and earn cryptocurrency with every forward step in their career.

In reimagining the ‘traditional’ sense of how a Boxers career should develop, the door is open for a whole new age of young, up and coming athletes.

Quick bites

• And there's more... UEFA investigating Barcelona over referee charges

• Folarin Balogun: The American-Brit chasing down Mbappe

• F1: No space for Hamilton at Red Bull

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Chat to ya on Monday! ☮️