Tag Archives: soccer

PlayerMaker Becomes First Performance Partner to BetVictor Northern Premier Football League

PlayerMaker, the leading international sports data analytics start-up, has teamed up with the BetVictor Northern Premier Football League (NPL), becoming the league’s first-ever player performance partner.

The deal is for an initial 12 months and will see PlayerMaker’s unique AI-driven boot-mounted device offered to players across the NPL’s 62 semi-professional clubs.

Already in use internationally, PlayerMaker tracks and analyses tactical, technical and physical player performance on and off the pitch. The breadth of data generated can inform coaches’ decision-making processes, particularly in relation to player performance optimisation, talent identification and injury prevention.

Players at participating NPL clubs will have the opportunity to train wearing the PlayerMaker device, providing the coaches and players with access to a comprehensive set of tailored metrics held securely. The NPL will also be discussing with the FA whether players can wear the PlayerMaker device in competitive matches.

Guy Aharon, CEO and Co-Founder of PlayerMaker, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be acting as the NPL’s official player performance partner over the next year, providing consultation services for performance optimisation and access to a stream of accurate and objective datapoints at a granular level. It is fantastic to see the NPL embracing technology in this way and we look forward to collaborating with their clubs over the coming year.”

Mark Harris, Northern Premier Football League Chairman, said: “The BetVictor Northern Premier League has always led the way in adopting digital technology. We are also committed to helping drive forward standards in coaching and player development. This exciting new partnership with PlayerMaker is the next stage in this journey.”

Youth Soccer Business Brings In Tech Partner To Engage Kids

Super Soccer Stars, the nation’s premier youth soccer organization, will launch a partnership with Famer , an Israel and New York based teaching app,  that will enable young players and parents to create and curate personalized training programs, messaging, and interactive feedback between coaches and athletes for the first time. The idea is to create a more user friendly and interactive environment for kids in the growing youth soccer space and then take that opportunity  to other similar spaces.

Soccer, and the over 100,000 engaged kids Super Soccer Stars has, is priority one.

“This will be the first of many digital offerings in our pipeline to drive home our vision of empowering youth through sport, something which is missing in the coaching pipeline today. We need to connect with our young people on any device and at any time possible, and by partnering with Famer, we will provide a mobile curriculum which supplements our classes to further engage our young Soccer Stars and their parents through our digital content. ” said Adam Geisler, CEO, Super Soccer Stars. ”Famer’s digital platform will become a core part of the Super Soccer Stars training curriculum going forward to enable our young athletes to tap into their full potential on and off the field.

“Consumers are used to be receiving on-demand access to communities from fitness classes to continuing education programs, but youth sports training has been missing that opportunity until now.  Famer provides that content for the first time, and there is no better partner to launch this than Super Soccer Stars with its proven curriculum, incredible teaching, and tremendous coaches,” added Rich Abend, CEO of Famer. “Our Famer Play product allows for better communication and provides a mobile and digital extension between Super Soccer Stars’ teachings and its parents, which leads to more fun and better participation for all.”

According to the release, Famer’s mobile app allows Super Soccer Stars’ coaches to share videos and instructions on how to perform Super Soccer Stars’ skills & drills at home, as well as assign weekly workouts and provide progress reports to athletes and parents. Super Soccer Stars customers from ages 2-X will be able to use the Famer app to digitally extend its age-specific skills and drills training program to the parent and the athlete as a supplemental interactive program at home.

With Famer, parents will have a clear understanding of their child’s training and development milestones and will receive the following:

●             Access to videos and descriptions week by week explaining their child’s Super Soccer Stars’ class activities.

●             Skills & Drills support their child by helping him/her work on what he/she just learned in class.

●             The ability to follow their participation progress.

●             Additional physical, mental, and social development activities for their child.

●             Quality time spent with their child by actively supporting him/her when practicing programs assigned by Super Soccer Stars’ coach.

Super Soccer Stars curriculum will be live via Famer’s app starting September 7.

Next steps on expansion to other sports and more interactivity will be rolled out later in 2019.

DraftKings Launches Women’s World Cup Fantasy Games

credit: Wikimedia Commons/Granada

For the first time ever, DraftKings will offer its innovative daily fantasy games for the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, making women’s soccer the 13th DFS category for DraftKings, which continues to lead the pack in available sports among fantasy operators.

“All eyes will be on the matches in France, and we are excited to offer soccer fans a more engaging way to enjoy the action,” said Matt Kalish, CRO and co-founder of DraftKings. “The passion of our fans informs our innovation and product roadmap, so for such a special event that only comes along every four years, we wanted to ensure our full complement of offerings would be at their fingertips.”

Fueling the DraftKings Women’s World Cup contests are the company’s data capabilities, which will source match and player information at every moment of play for fans to leverage in their daily fantasy selections. Customers can enjoy DraftKings Classic and Showdown modes for World Cup matches, constructing lineups of six players while staying within a $50,000 salary cap range and designating a “captain” slot that grants one player a bonus multiplier. Classic contests will require selecting players from more than one match, while Showdown contests must include players from each team in a single match.

In addition to the daily fantasy contests available in eight countries around the world – including the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia – fans in New Jersey and Mississippi will be able to legally bet on the Women’s World Cup for the first time via DraftKings Sportsbook, with mobile only available in New Jersey.

To get in the game inside the game during the Women’s World Cup, players can either head to www.draftkings.com or download the DraftKings app via iOS and Android. 

STATS’ Media and Gambling Sales Director to Speak at Betting on Football (Soccer)

STATS, the worldwide leader in sports data and intelligence, announced that media and gambling sales director Roy Clements will speak on a panel at Betting on Football at Stamford Bridge in London today.

Clements will present on the panel, “Data – do you get what you pay for?” at 15:30 on Thursday. The panel will focus on types of data feeds, delivery mechanisms, and creating the right data package for a business. Assaf Stieglitz, founder of Odds1x2, will moderate the panel with participation from other panelists spanning the sports data gambling space.

“Data is the backbone of the sports gambling sector, and having the right data feeds and integration is paramount to getting a sportsbook or other sports betting company off the ground,” said Clements. “Fast and accurate live data is obviously important, but we are also seeing a new wave of AI-powered predictions that are more accurately anticipating the events in a match. With third-screen experiences becoming a new part of following a match, it is important for companies to consider data integration when creating a fan experience on their platform. At STATS, we’re committed to investing in faster and more accurate data, and creating new match insights through AI-powered data solutions.”

Betting on Football brings together decision-makers from international operators to address the recent issues and opportunities in the sports betting industry. For more information, visit: https://sbcevents.com/betting-on-football-2019/

Chattanooga Football Club Surpasses $500,000 Mark In First 30 Days of Public Offering

Chattanooga Football Club, a growing, disruptive and innovative established club in the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL) today announced that they have exceeded the $500,000 dollar mark in the sale of limited public stock in the club in the first 30 days of the offering. They are the first American sports team to do so since the securities reform laws passed in late 2016 allowed such investments. Proceeds from the limited offering of 8,000 shares will support the club’s move from amateur to professional players and year-round operation.

“We remain impressed and overwhelmed with the breadth and scope of this project means not just for Chattanooga FC, but for community sports clubs in America in general,” said said Tim Kelly, club chairman. “We have not done this frivolously or in a vacuum; this is an investment in a soccer club with solid business and community ties and a vision for success on and off the pitch, and we know that is key in trying and succeeding to this point. The ROI on this investment, big or small, is in the people and the community. We are nowhere done, but we are proving the concept works, and that’s very exciting.”

While a majority of the investment is local (within the Chattanooga metro area), a significant amount (44% of the people, 37% of the dollars) are from beyond that area. That includes investment from over 44 states and 10 countries, as far away as Japan, Australia and Africa.  Some of the bolder face names to come public with investing are former MLS star and current NBC Sports Premier League commentator Kyle Martino and Stephan Szymanski, author of Soccernomics and Money in Soccer, and a highly respected professor at the University of Michigan.

Founded in 2009, Chattanooga Football Club has drawn nearly 350,000 fans to its games at Finley Stadium over the course of the last ten seasons. In 2019, the club will play an extended season with professional players in the NPSL Founders Cup, and fully launch the league in 2020.

With the passage of the Jobs Acts in late 2016, Section CF crowdfunding allows non-accredited investors to make investments in corporations from a simple, online platform. Chattanooga Football Club is the first sports team to offer shares, and one of only a handful of teams to ever offer public ownership. While the practice is common in the rest of the world- even mandatory in the German Bundesliga- it is rare in the US. Cutting Edge Capital, a strategic capital consulting company has advised on the process.

Fans and interested investors can go to wefunder.com/chattanoogafc for full details on the stock offering.

Leicester City Football Club’s odds longer than King Richard’s?

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The town that just re-buried the last king of England to die in battle just surpassed its own historic significance.
And it was for a battle of a different nature.
But the odds were longer for the team most likely than what faced King Richard III, who died in battle in 1485

At 5000-1, the odds of it winning the English Premier League title dwarfed some of the previous long shot sports outcomes of all time. Even the 1969 Mets were 100-1 to win the World Series.

There are no end to the superlatives tossed around about this improbably run by the Leicester City Football Club. Including that of Johnny Avello, the executive director of race and sports and Wynn Las Vegas.

“The Leicester City winning of the EPL is one of the biggest upsets In all time soccer if not all sports,” he offered 24 hours later as the reality of what had happened sunk in around the world.

The cost to bookmakers in Las Vegas run from $1 million to as high as $15 million, said, Avello.
“We had numerous $10 & $15 bets at 1000-1 and bigger wagers at lower odds,” he explained.
“Other off shore places had bets at 5000-1”
Avello, who has been doing this a long time, said it was the “biggest odds payout on a single event that I can remember.”

ESPN , back in February, perhaps sensed the longest of long shots soccer clubs might make a run, ran a good story outlining some of the other long shots in sports history, citing among others Auburn’s 1000-1 odds of winning a national championship in 2013, and the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals winning the World Series at 999-1

In terms of soccer, of football, the previous long shots were the US beating England in 1950 or Hungary beating England three years later at 500-1,  according to The Guardian, quoting William Hill’s Graham Sharpe.

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Yahoo’s Strategic Play Takes A Kick At DraftKings

By @TheDailyPayoff

Yahoo’s latest move could get them a leg up on DraftKings in the pay fantasy soccer space.

Last month Yahoo announced and then launched its daily pay fantasy platform, with an eye on using its deep roots in fantasy to take some of the larger space away from rivals Fan Duel and DraftKings. The move is aimed at carving its own piece in what is hoped to be a large daily pie as we move closer to the start of the lucrative NFL season.

However an interesting twist, reported by Darren Heitner of Forbes on Monday, could give a glimpse into another area which has suddenly become hot in the pay fantasy space, soccer.

Heitner reports that Mondogoal, the company with an established gambling license and growing ties in European soccer pay fantasy, has entered into a revenue sharing partnership to operate Yahoo’s pay soccer fantasy platform when European soccer gets going later this month. The strategic move, according to the story, put Yahoo immediately into the global soccer game ahead of DraftKings, who only recently applied for the required gambling license to operate in the UK.

It is a smart, quick strategic partnership that could score huge traffic for Mondogoal and their existing partnerships with clubs like Liverpool, Chelsea and AS Roma, and it gives Yahoo a much-needed operational partner to operate a game in a sport they don’t have a platform for, while they continue to push the already lucrative NFL and coming NBA market where they already have traction in the States.

Heitner’s full story can be seen at http://www.forbes.com/sites/darrenheitner/2015/08/03/yahoo-adds-daily-fantasy-soccer-signs-revenue-sharing-deal/

World Cup Fantasy Could Open Door to Olympic Fantasy

By Joe Favorito @Joefav @TheDailyPayoff

The success and proof of concept that Mondogoal achieved these past two weeks with Women’s World Cup showed that select niche mega-events can draw both dollars and attention.

DraftKings and other smaller companies have been looking to golf as a new growing platform because it is simple, mobile and can be played in and around live event. Their their million dollar winner for the US Open demonstrated a growing market not just for golfers but for millennials who may never play a four-hour round on a Saturday.

As we move closer to the one year out celebration that countries all over the world will put on for Rio, it’s interesting to start thinking about the permutations of Olympic fantasy and how it would work. New sports coming into Rio, golf especially, can easily be adapted to a pay fantasy model, and team sports like basketball are ripe for an engagement game.

Parlay the fact that the International Olympic Committee earlier this year approved legal sports books in Nevada to carry betting lines for next summer’s games, and that means that a deeper analytic dive will be made by betting houses around the world to find ways to create interest in sports like swimming and other individual sports as well. Fantasy gymnastics, anyone?

Maybe not gymnastics, as individual sports outside the mainstream may be too difficult to create an audience for. However for key team sports, and add in a growing sport like rugby which will be in the games for the first time and has a strong tie to traditional gambling play, and other mainstream team sports in the Games, and you have interesting opportunities for pay fantasy alongside traditional gambling being done legally from Las Vegas.

The interest in fantasy and gambling will not be lost on rights holder NBC as well. The recent numbers by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association show that the more fantasy play involved with sport, the more the viewer is engaged in the broadcast and all pieces that go along with engagement. Since the Olympics traditionally skew viewers that are older and more female, the goal is to find a younger and more engaged audience, and an investment in fantasy play may be smart, at least for American audience engagement for 2016.

“There is no doubt that pay fantasy is growing in engagement, the question is still how do you make it simple and appealing to a wide audience of casual fans, and there is no bigger event other than the Super Bowl that gathers casual fans like the Olympics,” said Chris Lencheski, longtime marketer and currently running the consulting business Phoenicia. “The amount of data available for the Olympics so vast, the broadcasters want more engagement, and the marketing dollars are there. While it might not be a huge playing audience for 2016, it can set the table for the future just like this Women’s World Cup game has, so it will be interesting to see who steps up to engage.”

While Yahoo has said they will make a big play in the pay fantasy space this fall, most other media companies have gone the partner route, looking for revenue share and advertising dollars from the bigger pay fantasy players thus far. Could that change if the marketplace shows an interest going forward? NBC has done a great job in creative engagement around its properties, and added engagement for the Olympics in the form of pay fantasy would be an intriguing look.

If it worked for WWC, maybe it can work for the Olympics as well.

Corruption Threatens Global Sports Gambling

By @TheDailyPayoff

In case you missed it, ESPN.com’s David Purdum posted a story yesterday on how the “integrity monitors” of sports gambling are looking to the United States to take the lead in pushing for legalizing sports betting in an effort to clean up the corruption running rampant now.
He quoted a global sports security expert who said crime syndicates out of Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia were pushing European soccer, for instance, into the “danger zone” when it comes to fixing matches.
Read Purdum’s full report here :”
http://espn.go.com/chalk/story/_/id/12925786/why-legalization-sports-betting-only-first-step-us-gambling