George Sun and his partners at their “smart threads” sports tech company were well into product development and early financing when they learned about the NBA Launchpad program last year.
Sun, the founder and CEO of Brooklyn-based materials science start-up Nextiles, and John Peters, the company’s chief business officer, leapt at the chance to use the league’s third-party technology accelerator program to advance their ideas for motion- and pressure -capture fabrics and sensors that can create data-based performance-enhancing clothing such as shooting/pitching sleeves, and ankle and knee sleeves.
So, they applied online. And they were announced as a winner in January, which meant they could tap into the league’s experts, partners, tech, and financing. Naturally, that has Sun praising the program.
“We had access to several tiers of decision-makers at the NBA and it was really fun,” he said. “(The) NBA did a phenomenal job with us being able to talk to subject matter experts to build awesome products.”
NBA Launchpad — at its core, it’s a type of tech business pitch program and an incubator — is now deep into vetting hundreds of applications for its 2022-23 program.
The inaugural 2021-22 program focused on the NBA’s on-court priorities, mostly around health and performance for youth and adult players and referee training and development and this year added off-court aspects such as improving fan experiences.
These are the official 2022-23 categories, per the league’s own language:
- Basketball: soft tissue injury prevention and recovery; healthy playing habits in youth basketball, disrupting the game (open category)
- Fan experience: game production and viewing experience; in-seat experience; sports betting experience
The application window for the current program began Sept. 15 and ended Oct. 27, and the league and its partners are now in the review process. There’s no set number on how many can be selected. Several will be picked from each topic category and presented to a panel of league, team, and subject-matter experts, based on the idea, business case, and applied science, per the NBA Launchpad guidelines.
One winner is picked from each category, likely announced in January, and enters a six-month R&D period that ends with a pitch at the NBA Summer League’s Demo Day in front of league officials, partners and potential investors. There’s no guarantee a project will get funding or a league deal.
Last year, five companies were selected to move forward in the process from hundreds of submissions. The applicants, from 25 countries, ranged from mature companies to early-stage start-ups, the league said.
Aside from Nextiles, the winning ideas included a German ankle-brace maker, a British virtual-reality training service, a 3-D performance tracking program from a California firm, and a mental-health app from an LA-based company.
Nextiles, which also has developed lightweight portable fabric force plates, continues its development and validation testing to ensure it can be used by the NBA. The intention is to sell Nextiles products directly to NBA teams, and eventually for anyone playing basketball that wants the insights its technology provides.
The company was a bit further along in both its development and financing when NBA Launchpad came along, Sun said. The program helped Nextiles with visibility and credibility as it continued to develop its technology and increase financing, he said.
“It’s really the next (capital) raise where the NBA would be a powerful voice for us,” Sun said.
In June, the company announced a $5 million seed funding round led by Drive by DraftKings with additional money coming from the NBA, Madison Square Garden Sports Corp., Alumni Ventures, SmartSports, Phoenix Capital Ventures and Newlab.
While that money was separate from NBA Launchpad, Sun said the program has been invaluable for the company, and the league was more involved than he expected.
“It was surprisingly hands-on,” he said. “They were responsive.”
The idea to formalize the pitch-to-the-NBA process was born in 2019, but the pandemic delayed its debut until 2021. It went well enough to expand it to off-court ideas.
“We thought it was a great opportunity to extend this to the business side of basketball,” said Matt Wolf, the NBA’s head of strategy and innovation who oversees the programs.
The game viewing/presentation category is especially interesting because of the evolving media consumption habits of younger fans — the ones most critical to the league’s future and sought by many advertisers — amid the shifting landscape of TV and streaming for live games.
The NBA didn’t set specific parameters around the category because it wants a range of potential ideas, technology, etc.
“We’ve intentionally left this broad to see what’s out there,” Wolf said. “We’re thinking about specific things around the viewing experience, how technology changes the way that games are presented to fans as we move towards digital.”
The league rolled out its new NBA app earlier this year and intends to use it as a major piece of its engagement strategy with fans going forward. The app is a potential beneficiary of outside ideas via NBA Launchpad.
“If there are interesting pieces of technology that could be embedded in the app to enhance the fan experience, that’s what we’re looking for,” Wolf said.
That includes back-of-house technology to capture, produce and distribute game content, he said. Intriguing ideas that earn NBA Launchpad help can be connected, if appropriate, to the league’s media rights holders — ESPN and Turner Sports, which are paying the NBA $24 billion collectively through 2024-25 to air live games.
The league is reportedly seeking up to $75 billion in its next round of media rights deals that are likely to include a streaming-exclusive set of games. Hence, the NBA’s interest in ideas in that space.
One of NBA Launchpad’s 2021 winners, Nextiles develops sleeves with circuitry sewn in that can help track athlete data on movement and force. (Courtesy of NBA Launchpad)
Gambling is widely seen by sports leagues as a potential big revenue generator as sports wagering is legalized among the states, which is why NBA Launchpad has a wagering track this time.
“On the sports betting side, one of the challenges of this area is that the rollout of sports betting is being done state by state. It’s been a little harder to identify broadly applicable technology and companies to help us push this forward,” Wolf said.
Data giant Sportradar will help the league evaluate any wagering pitches, he added. And while the league wants its share of gambling revenue, it also sees wagering as part of its engagement strategy to build and grow its fanbase. It links back to the game-consumption track.
“Overall, we know that there’s a relationship between people who wager on NBA and sporting events and how much NBA and sports content they consume,” Wolf said.
NBA Launchpad finalists will be selected by the end of the year, after which the six-month research and development process begins. That’s when the league links the companies with development aid and investors. The league has internal committees of experts to handle the submission evaluation process for the various tracks.
There’s no single final decision-maker on who gets selected for the program.
“There’s not any one person. We envision this intentionally as a very collaborative process,” Wolf said. Key league executives have “significant say” in the vetting process.
After the R&D period, the winning companies will make a presentation amid the NBA Summer League events in Las Vegas next July. The Demo Day audience is not only NBA executives, owners and personnel but also executives from the sports tech industry and potential investors, making the NBA Summer League a bit of a laboratory for new ideas and products.
“The intention is an opportunity to get in front of senior league and team executives focused on startups and technology, but also continue to build relationships in innovation and technology spaces,” Wolf said.
He labeled the intended projects to be “intentionally bespoke” rather than shoehorned into narrow expectations within the tracks. They don’t have to fit rigid criteria to qualify, Wolf said.
“We’re using this as an opportunity to see what’s out there, interesting companies,” Wolf said.
The league’s experts, he said, will determine where the companies are at in their business and development lifecycle and then connect them with additional expertise, mentoring, financing and provide access to any necessary league data.
That helped Nextiles get closer to finalizing its products for future B2B or retail sales.
“We do have a lot of headway into producing a viable product that can be used in the NBA,” Sun said.
And if one of the NBA Launchpad ideas or products selected is more conceptual, and perhaps not even organized as a formal business, the league can help, Wolf said.
“In that scenario, it would be more of a jointly developed partnership,” he said. “The flexibility here is what makes this program more unique.”
Financing for any of the companies that still need money could come from outside investors, league partners, or even the NBA itself.
“We’re intentionally keeping all options open,” Wolf said.
And the state of last year’s winners? The league didn’t get into details.
“We are continuing to work with a number of those companies,” Wolf said. “We had a lot of success of the first iteration of NBA Launchpad and several of those companies we continue to build relationships.”
It remains unclear when the 2021 winners could see their products in use with the league and its players.
“The time horizon for when these could be implemented and visible to NBA fans is flexible, as is the design of the relationship,” Wolf said.
When a product from the NBA Launchpad pipeline becomes available, the league is prepared to alert the 30 teams just as it does with any product or news.
“We will continue to use the mechanisms we have in place that give us the opportunity to get pieces of interesting information to our teams,” Wolf said. The league regularly conducts meetings and calls with team front offices to share best practices, discuss emerging trends, and identify companies that can further business goals.
Interestingly, the NBA’s team governors include Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks, and he’s invested in a number of sports tech companies over the years and is widely known for being one of the investors on ABC’s “Shark Tank” business reality show since 2011.
However, he’s not involved in NBA Launchpad.
“I think it’s great that we are doing it. But I’m not involved in any of the decision-making,” Cuban said via email.
The league prides itself on being at the forefront of technology and innovation, Wolf said, and the hope is NBA Launchpad can help maintain and grow a loyal paying fanbase into the future, alongside any in-game ideas that can help players and the basketball side .
“We’re fortunate our fans skew young, diverse and tech-savvy and are the type of consumers that are excited about embracing technology,” he said.
(Image of the NBA Launchpad logo / launchpad.nba.com)
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