When you think of Comcast, you probably think of the cable or internet service, but it also owns NBCUniversal. With that comes a fair bit of sports coverage, including the Olympics, NASCAR, WWE and PGA, to name a few. As such, Comcast has some motivation to drive innovation in how sports are covered and consumed.
In 2020, the company decided it needed a vehicle to support startups that were trying to bring disruptive technology related to sports. The Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech Accelerator was born with a vision of finding startups that would bring some innovation to their sports league partners, while giving the startups access to Comcast’s media expertise and the leagues themselves.
This year the accelerator welcomed 10 companies to its 2023 cohort, its third class. Unlike a lot of accelerators, this one isn’t looking for absolute beginners. Instead, it wants companies that have already built a product and are working with customers. Comcast works with the companies throughout the six-month period, introducing them to their partners and helping them grow, but the companies continue to operate as normal.
Comcast invests $50,000 into each company in return for stocky equity. Jenna Kurath, VP of startup partnerships and head of Comcast NBCU SportsTech, admits it is a nominal amount of money, designed mostly to cover expenses related to participating in the accelerator. But she says the investment sends an important message to their cohort participants.
“It’s really about us having skin in the game and in their success for one, but I think the other big important piece of that is that’s typically stock you would reserve for bringing on a strategic adviser,” Kurath told TechCrunch+. “But in this case, you’re bringing on multiple strategic advisers from different sports teams and leagues and types of sports.”
The company also has a sister accelerator, called Comcast NBCU Lift Labs, which is a six-week program focused on enterprise AI companies.
For the SportsTech accelerator, the idea is to find viable sports-related startups, help them grow, and find potential partners and customers to help expand the businesses of the participating companies.
Crossing boundaries and building relationships
It’s all well and good to be sports-focused, but Kurath says the accelerator actually looks for companies that transcend any particular sport, while maybe even having room to work across some adjacent industries. She says if you’re focused on one sport, you probably can’t scale.
“So if you look at sports, it is not an easy industry to break into. If you were through networking, able to land within tennis, as an example, you’re going to see that your product roadmap is going to be very tennis-centric. That’s not necessarily something that can scale and add value across multiple types of teams or sports leagues,” she said.
A good example of this type of more diverse company is Rivalry Tech, a member of the 2021 cohort, which began as an app to order food from your seat with early customers in MLB. But it had a broader vision that appealed to the accelerator, and conversely the accelerator’s broader approach also appealed to Rivalry Tech.
Company co-founder and CEO Aaron Knape saw it as a conduit for expanding into other sports. He says as a startup that wasn’t an absolute beginner, he didn’t need advice on how to build a pitch deck or how to sell. He needed introductions into the wider world of sports.
“We needed connections. We needed insights on how these massive partners are thinking, about how they’re trying to execute their own business strategies,” Knape told TechCrunch+. He says the SportsTech accelerator was a vehicle that could provide that for his company.
The startup also wants to expand beyond sports, and the fact that Comcast is a large and varied business could also help in that regard. “If you can develop something on the grand stage of sports, if you will, that is applicable in other industries, that’s where the real power comes in,” Kurath said.
To that end, Knape says his company is now working very closely with Comcast Business to get its quick serve restaurant clients as customers. “We’re also talking to them about mobilizing in the health care and their hospitality space. And that’s, as you can probably tell, a much bigger space than sports,” he said.
Beyond graduation
Meanwhile, the SportsTech accelerator’s league partners hope to piggyback on the innovation of the cohort’s participants when it makes sense. Craig Neeb, EVP and chief development officer at NASCAR, says he’s inundated with pitches, and having access to the companies in the SportsTech accelerator gives him a more curated group from a partner he’s used to working with.
“I get just bombarded with requests, so for us to have that partnership with [Comcast], who’s going to vet all that, understand the focus areas that we have in our business and get us homed in on some potential candidates down to the finalists has just a huge, huge upside for me,” Neeb said.
Investor Lance Dietz from KB Partners, a sports tech venture capital firm, has invested in at least one graduate of the accelerator. He also likes the fact that the accelerator is helping these companies with partnerships and customer acquisition.
“They have built some incredible partnerships with [organizations like] NASCAR, WWE and Comcast in general that can be really meaningful to a company as they think about their product, they think about their go-to-market,” Dietz said.
In September, KB Partners participated in a $1 million seed in BookSeats, after it participated in the accelerator. The startup helps fans book an entire experience around an event, including flights and hotel rooms.
The Comcast NBCU SportsTech Accelerator is designed to bring more of these kinds of companies to light and help them expand and grow beyond the affiliation with Comcast. “We want them to grow and scale their business. We don’t want them just anchored in our world for them to be successful, and for that portfolio investment to work,” Kurath said
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