Venture capital fund Podium Silicon Valley (SV) has launched a new startup competition, modeled on soccer’s World Cup, for early-stage sports technology companies.
The SportsTech World Cup will kick off with a Nordic edition this week, with other regional versions planned to follow in the future. Sports technology companies from the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden are able to enter the competition starting Tuesday. Companies specializing in five key areas, or “tracks” as Podium SV has termed them, including in augmented or virtual reality, artificial intelligence, wearables, esports and fan experience, are invited to submit an application.
The application deadline is until Oct. 6, and from there, 10 finalists will be selected. These companies will showcase their offerings at a live pitch day to be held at an event, Smash, which takes place in Helsinki at the end of November. This event is a new side event which is officially endorsed by Slush and will focus on sport, technology and startups. Finally, after this, there will be a final event to be held in Silicon Valley in March 2018 to select a winner.
Podium SV as a fund focuses on sports technology, media and also the entertainment space. It has worked with a host of professional sports organizations, including the NHL, Major League Soccer and the Olympic Games.
“The magic of working in Silicon Valley is that things happen quickly,”Mounir Zok, Executive Advisor to Podium Silicon Valley. “The competition came from an ideas exchange session over dinner with friends, and I put that idea to people who work at Nordic Innovation House.”
According to Zok, the organization which supports Nordic Startups Community and is based in Silicon Valley, was sold on the idea quickly.
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In a published statement around the launch of the event, Nordic Innovation House Board Member Hartti Suomela said: “This Nordic edition of SportsTech World Cup provides a huge opportunity for our high quality SportsTech companies to get connected with the American sports ecosystem. At the same time, it also enables us to increase the visibility of Nordic sports technology here in the US.”
From there, Podium SV spoke with Smash CEO Tommi Kolehmainen to secure a pitch day slot for startups who would take place in this world cup.
“This is how it all came together from idea to execution, it was only a couple of weeks,” Zok said. “Sports is all about competition too. Let’s take the sports model and apply that into the startup world and organize a world cup. The model we’re working with is a global model, we want to have national teams, referring to team Denmark for example.”
Meanwhile, Jordi Ferré Albiol, Innovation Lead at Podium SV, said in a written comment of the overall goal of the competition: “At PodiumSV, we aim to create the world’s leading community that is disrupting the sports industry. In an era of exponential progress and democratization where innovation is everywhere we believe startups are a key driver of change. Through the STWC we are uncovering the most promising thinkers, visioners and enterpreneurs leading game-changer startups.”
Podium SV, to support this competition, has already appointed a number of regional ambassadors, including Pelle Simonson at Peak In Sports and Jakob Soderberg at Innovation Center Denmark.
Concerning these ambassadors, Zok said: “One of the insights we uncovered early on was that we need folks on the ground who understand the region. The five ambassadors, all come from the sports or innovation world and have helped us spread the word locally.”
Regarding when the other editions of this world cup would be rolled out, Zok said that the Nordic world cup would need to be completed before further competitions would be launched. “Once it is over, we will be sharing our timelines for different regions,” he said.