Stadia Ventures, the St. Louis-based Sports Innovation Hub for entrepreneurs, industry partners and investors, recently held their third Demo Day which saw pitches from their five current Fall of 2016 cohort members. True to St. Louis’ current “history-meets-innovation” form, which Stadia embodies for the revitalizing midwest city, the Demo Day was held in a gymnasium built in 1925 to house Saint Louis University’s Div-I men’s and women’s basketball teams that had recently received a $14 million renovation to turn it into a hi-tech meeting center.
The investor pitches from the five startups can be viewed below:
In addition to the pitches, Stadia also hosted a panel about “The Power of eSports” with leaders from the Philadelphia 76ers, Twitch, OGN and Enemy eSports. A repeated takeaway stat from the panel that continues to resonate is that more people watched an eSports Championship than watched the Stanley Cup, World Series and NBA Finals…combined.
You can check out their panel below:
Finally, and most importantly for the future of Stadia Ventures, they announced the launch of a new $25-50 Million fund (Stadia Fund II) that will complement their $10 Million fund (Stadia Fund I). The new fund will expand the Stadia Accelerator program to potentially new locations outside of St. Louis and open up Stadia to pursue later stage startups.
Stadia is now accepting applications for their Spring 2017 cohort (deadline to apply is January 14th) and looking for sports business executives, retired athletes and strategic investors to be a part of their Advisory Pool and new fund.
Disclosure: I am part of the Advisory Pool.