The second edition of the EB Tech Challenge, a collaboration between the University of La Salle-URL and Euroleague Basketball, came to an end on Friday as finalist startups and projects pitched their presentations to the six-member jury in Barcelona, Spain.
The nine presenting finalists were selected from among a total of 60 projects from 20 different countries that applied in recent months to share their most innovative technologies to solve existing challenges within the professional sports industry or create new revenue generation and fan engagement opportunities.
Meet the finalists:
- Dynamitick: Dynamic pricing solution for tickets. Algorithms take into account a wide range of variables in order to estimate the demand and calculate the best price for every product or service sold by the club.
- Texel: Watch the game from your sofa as if you were in a courtside seat. Their engine allows users around the globe to interact with each other like they were sitting on the same sofa, breaking the isolation of the VR experience.
- Neoverse: Multi-device content distribution platform that lets stakeholders provide multiple format contents (2d, 360, VR, AR on demand and livestream) to the fans.
- ZoomTV: AI driven computer vision technology measures and constantly monitors the value that sports events create for sponsors on TV and other video platforms.
- Kiswe Mobile: is a unique cloud-based production toolkit to let remote commentators create personalized audio and video streams.
- Snaptivity: Connected sensors track crowd movement and collect 16 data points like sound, light, ambience. This big data is analyzed using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms to understand behavior and emotions of the fans along with the stadium environment
- Blink Identity: Biometric identification for ticketing, hospitality and personalized services to customers and fans.
- MediaStalker: Protects the genius of creators and copyright owners by stopping media piracy of their very valuable content with AI and machine-learning algorithms that specializes in disrupting piracy.
- PlayPass: NFC Cashless payment solution which can also be linked to access control.
Finalists got the opportunity to work all week long together with Euroleague Basketball executives in further developing their solutions to ensure it better solves the concrete challenges of Euroleague Basketball, its clubs, its partners, and other sports organizations. Participants attended lectures from La Salle-URL professors and top Euroleague Basketball management on entrepreneurship and sports business, in addition to being able to connect with industry leaders in networking events.
The winning projects are:
- Tech Challenge Overall Winner: Kiswe Mobile
- Special mention: Blink Identity
- Best Pitch: Snaptivity
- Rising Star: Texel
Winners of EB Tech Challenge 2019
"I would like to personally thank all the finalists, mentors and jury members for their particiaption in the second edition of the Tech Challenge," Mr. Jordi Bertomeu, Euroleague Basketball President and CEO, stated. "It has been a very interesting experience to hear such a wide variety of proposals that can provide value to the sports business and enrich the experience of the fans."
"This second edition of the EB Tech Challenge has exceeded all expectations. From La Salle-URL we always try to enhance the innovative and disruptive spirit, and we are very satisfied to have shared this week with sports-oriented start-ups from all over the world that share this mentality.” Mr. Josep M. Santos, General Director of Salle-URL stated. "We would like to thank Euroleague Basketball for their confidence by repeating the experience this year and the jury and mentors for their participation”
Euroleague Basketball and La Salle-URL want to especially thank the jury members for their participation:
Jordi Bertomeu – President & CEO, Euroleague Basketball
Josep M. Santos – General Director, La Salle Campus Barcelona-URL
Xavier Bidault – Commercial Director, Basketball, IMG Media
David Hopkinson – Global Head of Partnerships, Real Madrid
Didac Lee – Board Member, Galdana Ventures
Sree Varma – Founder & CEO, iSportconnect & iSportconnect Capital
Luis Vicente – Chief Digital Transformation & Innovation Officer at FIFA
Kiswe Mobile with Jordi Bertomeu from Euroleague Basketball and Josep M. Santos of La Salle-URL
The participants and all the organization of EB Tech Challenge 2019