The 10 startups that will compete in the final phase of the 2019 EB Tech Challenge were announced on Tuesday after drawing scores of applicants from 20 different countries, all offering disruptive solutions for the sports industry. The finalists include three startups from the United States, two from Belgium and one each from the United Kingdom, Italy, Lithuania, Greece and Spain.
All will travel to Barcelona from January 21 to 25 for a busy week in which they will be joined by Euroleague Basketball experts who will mentor each of them to adapt their innovative solutions to the professional sports industry. Attendees will also get access to different networking sessions and conferences from industry experts during the week and will present their final pitch to a jury formed by experts in the sports and entrepreneurship industries.
Jury members include:
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, FC Barcelona and Co-Founder, Galdana Ventures
Sree Varma – Founder & CEO, iSportconnect & iSportconnect Capital
Luis Vicente – Chief Digital Transformation & Innovation Officer at FIFA
The 10 finalists, selected amongst over 60 applicants from 20 different countries are:
- 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 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: Multidevice content distribution platform that lets 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.
- Instant Sponsor: blockchain-powered global sponsorship platform seamlessly connecting brands and the rights holders (teams, athletes and events) across sports, Esports and entertainment.
- Snapify: Connected sensors track crowd movement and collect 16 data points like sound, light, ambience. This big data is analysed using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms to understand behaviour 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 an AI & machine learning algorithms that specializes in disrupting piracy.
- PlayPass: NFC Cashless payment solution which can also be linked to access control.