Free streaming service Tubi is also making its mark, launching creator-hosted live altcasts to complement the 2026 F1 season on Apple TV
The World Fencing League promised a revolution. On Saturday April 25 at the Shrine Auditorium and Exhibition Hall in Los Angeles, it delivered one.
Apple Maps just rolled out a fully immersive 3D experience for the Miami International Autodrome, arriving ahead of the May 3 Miami Grand Prix. It's the second circuit to get this treatment in Apple's "2026 Formula 1 Tracks Around the World" guide, following the season-opening Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park.
Apple Maps just rolled out a fully immersive 3D experience for the Miami International Autodrome, arriving ahead of the May 3 Miami Grand Prix. It's the second circuit to get this treatment in Apple's "2026 Formula 1 Tracks Around the World" guide, following the season-opening Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park.
"Spotify's first US sports deal isn't the NFL. It isn't the NBA. It's the New York Liberty."
Swedish audio streaming giant Spotify has secured a multi-year partnership with the New York Liberty, making it the company's first US sports team deal. The agreement, finalized days before the 2026 preseason opens on April 25, sees Spotify become the Liberty's official music partner.
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What you get: 45 days from day of purchase of connection to Sports Tech Atlanta. After the deal memo is created, Sports Tech Atlanta will begin to direct communication to potential partners. This memo service does not guarantee an investment, deal, or partnership. Throughout the 45 days STA will send weekly check ins to update on outreach targets and communications. Upon completion of the 45 days. STA will deliver a report displaying performance, targets, outreach, and any additional information gathered throughout the process.
The scope of the deal is broad. Spotify will have a prominent presence throughout Barclays Center — signage, digital touchpoints, and on-court branding — while also sponsoring several events across the season. On the content side, the partnership will produce player playlists, stories from Liberty athletes about their musical tastes, and an official team playlist that will be refreshed throughout the year.
Mark your calendarTo kick off the partnership, Spotify will host a block party at the Liberty's first home game at Barclays Center on May 8. Expect the music-basketball crossover to be front and center.
For Spotify, this is a notable strategic pivot into US team sports. The company's largest partnership remains its front-of-shirt and stadium naming rights deal with FC Barcelona, running through 2030. It has also built relationships with the ATP men's tennis tour and several esports organizations. But choosing a WNBA franchise as the vehicle for its first American team deal is a deliberate signal — and one that speaks volumes about where investor and brand attention is flowing.
Meanwhile, the Victory+ OTT platform has struck a multi-year deal to become the exclusive local streaming home of the Minnesota Lynx, marking the platform's first WNBA agreement. Starting with the 2026 season, fans across the Minneapolis–St. Paul region and surrounding markets will gain free, ad-supported access to a minimum of 18 regular-season games, plus three preseason contests and shoulder programming.
Coverage begins immediately, with the Lynx's preseason matchup against the Washington Mystics on April 25. For Victory+, the Lynx deal adds to a portfolio that already includes a 57-game NWSL slate, League One Volleyball rights, and local deals with the Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Stars, and Texas Rangers — a rapidly expanding footprint in women's and regional sports streaming.
Both deals reflect a broader trend that practitioners in the sports technology and media space have been watching closely: the WNBA is no longer a secondary consideration for major commercial partners. It's a first mover's market. Brands that establish early partnerships — as Spotify has done here — are positioning themselves ahead of what increasingly looks like a sustained, long-term growth curve for women's professional basketball.
For the streaming side, Victory+'s aggressive rights acquisition strategy across women's leagues and regional sports is a bet that free, ad-supported models can drive audience scale where subscription fatigue is real. That's a hypothesis worth watching as the 2026 season unfolds.
On April 22 — the eve of the Draft — Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University and the AI Strike Team brought together investors, founders, civic leaders, and sports executives for Powering the Future of Sport: A Draft Week Showcase at CMU's newly opened Robotics Innovation Center in Hazelwood Green. The venue itself tells a story: a former steel mill site reimagined as the nation's premier facility for physical AI research and commercialization. Old Pittsburgh and new Pittsburgh, in one building.
The centerpiece of the day was the Forge to Field AI Pitch Competition — a Shark Tank-style showdown drawing over 100 applications from across the country, with six finalists competing for a share of a $1.75 million prize pool LancasterOnline, including up to $1 million in AWS cloud credits. The prize comes with a condition: winners commit to establishing a meaningful operating presence in Pittsburgh or Western Pennsylvania.
Judging the competition was a panel that included Pittsburgh-area native Mark Cuban, Dick's Sporting Goods founder Ed Stack, and others — with a clear message that the city is serious about attracting talent and capital at the intersection of sport and tech. Axios
And if you needed any more proof that this was a full-city moment — Steelers legend Jerome Bettis was there, watching Mayor Corey O'Connor dive for a football thrown by a robot, scuffing his navy suit in the process. LancasterOnline As Bettis put it, AI is "gonna change the game" his son will know when he graduates from college. "That's what makes it so beautiful — it's happening at home."
Cuban didn't hold back either: "I think Pittsburgh, after Silicon Valley, is becoming the leading center for artificial intelligence and robotics. CMU is really establishing themselves, not only as a leader in terms of education, but in terms of entrepreneurship as well. And what makes us dramatically different than Silicon Valley is it's affordable to live here." LancasterOnline
The Six Companies That Pitched
Here are the six finalists chosen from nearly 100 qualified applicants across more than 10 tech hubs nationwide: Cyprus CEO
Flowstate — Think of them as the intelligence layer for sports video. Their AI agents analyze both live and pre-recorded footage to automate workflows across content, sponsorship, media operations, and fan distribution. If you've ever wondered how leagues and teams could move faster on content at scale, this is the answer.
MyoVerse — A wearable neuromuscular sensing and AI analytics platform that converts real-time muscle activity into objective biomarkers. The use cases span performance optimization, rehabilitation, and clinical decision-making. This is the kind of tech that bridges athletic performance and sports medicine in a way that's genuinely new.
As AI Strike Team founder Joanna Doven framed it: "The future of sport isn't just about winning games — it's about who owns the advantage in the next technological era. The same AI and robotics transforming athlete performance are the same technologies powering trillion-dollar industries like defense and healthcare." Carnegie Mellon University
The most important thing Moses Moody did this offseason wasn't showing up to the gym.
It was showing up to a cap table.
The Golden State Warriors guard — currently rehabbing a torn patellar tendon after a career-best season — has joined SportsVisio as an investor and strategic advisor.
SportsVisio is a Boston-based AI sports analytics platform founded in 2021 by Jason Syversen, a former DARPA program director who ran over $100 million in classified research programs before moving into venture-backed sports tech. The platform uses computer vision and deep learning to transform game footage shot on any device — a phone on a tripod, a tablet in the bleachers — into NBA-style box scores, shot charts, player highlight reels, and advanced metrics, automatically.
No specialized hardware. No manual stat entry. Just point a camera, upload the footage, and let the AI work.
The company has raised over $9 million to date, with backing from Sapphire Sport, Hyperplane, Sony Innovation Fund, Mighty Capital, Alumni Ventures, and Sovereign's Capital. It serves more than 150 leagues, clubs, and teams across 16 countries, with more than 16,000 users on the platform. It has expanded from basketball into volleyball and 3x3, with baseball on the roadmap.
The thesis is straightforward: pro-level analytics shouldn't be locked behind pro-level budgets. SportsVisio is building the infrastructure to democratize what only NBA front offices used to have.
Work with one of the Sports Tech Atlanta advisors and consultants on GTM, investor relations, pitch ideas, and much more.
Moses Moody is 23 years old. He's earned over $17 million in his NBA career. He holds an equity stake in at least one other early-stage company. He's been quietly building a network of founders, VC principals, and exited operators — hosting curated investor evenings during road trips throughout the season. He launched a digital AI mentor through Delphi to scale his mentorship reach beyond what his schedule allows. He joined the NBPA Foundation's board of directors last summer.
This is not an athlete slapping his name on a product because his agent made a call.
This is a player who understands, deeply, what the technology actually does — and who grew up in the exact pipeline that SportsVisio was built to serve.
Moody came up through the grassroots system. He played at Montverde Academy, one of the most analytically sophisticated prep programs in the country, before going to Arkansas and being taken 14th overall in the 2021 draft. He has spent his entire professional career inside the Warriors organization, one of the most data-forward franchises in basketball history. He knows what it means to have your performance broken down frame by frame. He knows what coaching looks like when it's powered by real data.
And he knows that most kids playing the game he played never had any of that.
That's the gap SportsVisio closes. And that's the gap Moody is now putting capital behind.
The scoreboard has officially moved into your car.
Apple quietly dropped version 3.10 of its Apple Sports app this week, and buried inside the release notes is something sports tech operators, fan engagement teams, and league technology officers should be paying attention to: CarPlay now has live sports score widgets
The update delivers two new widget types for CarPlay's Dashboard screen: My Teams and Leagues.
My Teams tracks live scores and schedules for the franchises you've favorited inside the app. Leagues pulls real-time updates across the competitions you follow — MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS, NFL, F1, the Premier League, and more. You access them by swiping right on the CarPlay interface, and you configure everything from your iPhone under Settings > General > CarPlay > Widgets.
The setup takes under two minutes. The payoff is a persistent, glanceable sports layer sitting right alongside your navigation and music — exactly where fans have wanted it.
CarPlay gained widget support with iOS 26, and Apple Sports version 3.10 is the first sports app to fully leverage that infrastructure at scale.
This CarPlay update doesn't live in isolation. It's part of a clear strategic pattern.
Apple Sports launched in 2024 and has been quietly expanding its footprint ever since — covering the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NASCAR, F1, Premier League, PGA TOUR, and more. Version 3.10 also adds F1 race-day weather conditions (track temperature, wind speed, rain probability) directly inside the app, and introduces early 2026 FIFA World Cup tracking tools ahead of the June 11 kickoff.
The product is evolving from a score aggregator into something closer to a sports command center.
Instantly elevate your startup's investor appeal with a tailored deal memo crafted by professionals.
Create a professional deal memo effortlessly, enhancing your startup's appeal to investors.
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Unlock potential investment opportunities and set your startup on a path to success with ease and confidence. This service empowers you to focus on growth while we handle the heavy lifting of investor engagement.
What you get: 45 days from day of purchase of connection to Sports Tech Atlanta. After the deal memo is created, Sports Tech Atlanta will begin to direct communication to potential partners. This memo service does not guarantee an investment, deal, or partnership. Throughout the 45 days STA will send weekly check ins to update on outreach targets and communications. Upon completion of the 45 days. STA will deliver a report displaying performance, targets, outreach, and any additional information gathered throughout the process.
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