Wednesday, July 24, 2019 – A roundup of some of the key sports technology stories you need to know, including SportTechie’s own content and stories from around the web.
- DraftKings has signed a multiyear deal to become the first official daily fantasy game of the PGA Tour. DraftKings fantasy golf contestants will be able to receive real-time video highlights for PGA Tour players in their lineups. The PGA Tour and DraftKings will also collaborate on a variety of real-time product enhancements via the PGA Tour’s ShotLink data feed. “Golf continues to grow in popularity among DFS players globally at DraftKings and is our fourth-largest sport in terms of engagement, out of 15 total offerings.” said Ezra Kucharz, chief business officer of DraftKings, in a press release.
- Nasdaq will begin providing technology to UK-based gambling platform Football Index. The company lets users buy and sell shares of professional soccer players with real money. Football Index will now leverage the same Nasdaq-powered cloud software used to buy and sell stocks on international financial markets. “Football Index will use our matching engine technology to provide their clients with a platform to revolutionize how fixed-odds betting operates,” said Paul McKeown, a senior vice president at Nasdaq, in a press release.
- The Overwatch League plans to beta-launch a new prediction game for live matches tomorrow. League Picks will be accessible via the league’s website and will allow fans to make predictions while they watch the OWL. Viewers who are correct will be awarded with tokens that can be used to purchase skins for their own in-game avatars. New challenges will circulate on a weekly basis, and will range from those as simple as predicting a match winner to more complex, analytical questions, according to Dot Esports.
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- IMG will produce and distribute the inaugural Fortnite World Cup finals for Epic Games. The event will take place this weekend at New York’s Arthur Ashe Tennis Stadium. IMG will deliver all broadcast content via a digitally encoded stream from its studio in London. The company’s in-flight sports channel, Sport 24 Extra will also show the Fortnite World Cup live on international flights on select airlines. Epic Games also announced a new picture-in-picture viewing format that lets fans stream the World Cup finals while they play Fortnite themselves. The tournament will be streamed on Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, Caffeine, Mixer, and Fortnite’s website.
- Tencent will stream condensed broadcasts of NBA 2K League playoffs and finals games in China. The country’s leading internet services provider will stream games across Tencent Sports, Tencent Video, and Tencent News. Playoff matches will begin streaming today and the league’s best-of-five finals series will tip-off Aug. 3. Chinese NBA fans have been able to stream live NBA League Pass games on Tencent platforms since 2016, while the company also owns the rights to stream NFL and MLB games in China.
- Techstars launches a new sports technology accelerator in Melbourne, Australia. Founding partners of the Techstars SportsTech Melbourne Accelerator include LaunchVic, a government-backed startup agency, Victoria University, and Tennis Australia, the country’s governing body for tennis. The mentorship-driven accelerator will accept 10 startups annually and the program’s first year will run from March through June 2020. Applications for the program open in September. This is Techstars’ second sports tech-focused accelerator. The company also launched an Indianapolis-based accelerator in June.
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