Carina Mae

⚽ Here's the savviness I see in Major League Soccer and EA SPORTS' cross-platform marketing partnership... This month, MLS took a bold step to place its live product in the hands of Electronic Arts (EA), which will stream four live matches directly inside the EA Sports FC mobile game. At first glance, it’s a creative content distribution deal. But dig deeper and you’ll find the future of sports fandom – at the intersection of media, gaming, and culture: 💗 Harnessing Strong Multi-Generational 3rd-Party IP EA Sports FC (fka, and affiliated with, FIFA) is the highest-selling sports video game franchise in history with 325M+ copies sold. Its football/soccer franchise has been a cultural touchstone for global sports fans for decades. By embedding live MLS matches inside the game — complete with in-game rewards and free trials to Apple’s MLS Season Pass — the league taps into a pre-engaged, highly global, and digital-first audience who are emotionally attached to the game as well as all the #intellectualproperty within it. Warm leads. 🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Engaging Critical Younger Demographics Sports Business Journal previously reported that the average age of traditional TV sports viewers is creeping upward (MLB: 57, NFL: 50, NBA: 42). In contrast, the average age of EA's player base is 33. MLS recognizes that reaching next-gen fans requires going beyond traditional broadcast audiences and – to a lesser extent – the patchwork of streaming platforms carrying live sports content. They must travel to where younger fans are already spending time (gaming and mobile gaming) and offer novel socially integrated experiences. Audience shift. ❌⭕ Mirroring Other Major Leagues’ Playbooks We’ve seen the #NFL leverage SpongeBob simulcasts, the #NBA partner with fashion brands like SKIMS, #MLB embrace TikTok creators, and the #NHL dive into Roblox. #MLS now has its own fan engagement experiment to cultivate an audience that’s participatory, communal, global in scope and value-aligned. Industry expert George Pyne said it best in his #ChannelChange LinkedIn newsletter: “The common thread across these tactics is recognition that [modern sports fans] crave being part of a social group that complements their value system." Communities count. 📲 Driving Multi-Channel Value Creation Per Marketing Dive, 45.7% of sports fans use smartphones to access live sports content. But this partnership transcends ‘reach’. By offering EA FC Mobile players a free month of MLS Season Pass, the league is creating a funnel back to its core media ecosystem. Flywheel effect. TLDR; Innovative omnichannel audience aggregation strategies - like turning games into alternative broadcasters - will theoretically position MLS to command stronger sponsorships, partnerships, and future rights deals over time. #sportsbusiness #marketing #gaming

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The #NFLDraft captivates millions of fans—each pick representing hope, strategy, and the future of 32 franchises. This year, AWS is working with the National Football League (NFL) to transform that experience. Today, hours before we hear the first-round picks announced, we launched Draft IQ Assistant, an agentic AI assistant trained on the same historical #NextGenStats research data that powers Draft IQ (powered by QuickSight). Draft IQ Assistant allows fans to ask the agent questions leading up to and during the Draft like '“Who are the top five remaining defensive tackles for the 49ers?” or “What positions has Seattle prioritized in past drafts?” Check it out on the Draft AI Assistant tab at nfl.com/iq #NFLDraft #AWS #SportsTech #Analytics #Innovation #NFL

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Snap Inc. found the clean room easy button. With LiveRamp’s Quick Start Media Insights, they’re helping advertisers collaborate faster, measure smarter, and innovate without the mess. Learn how they're simplifying clean room insights and scaling success.

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A few years ago, LiveOps mostly meant one thing: Push out events. Track engagement. Repeat. But in 2025, that definition is getting a serious upgrade. LiveOps isn’t just about new content anymore. It’s about 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞: the ongoing decisions you make to keep every player feeling seen, rewarded, and motivated to stay. We’re seeing studios shift from: • Weekly updates → to real-time, player-level changes • Calendar-led drops → to behavior-led moments • Static segments → to responsive, predictive flows It’s less “What should we launch this Friday?” More “What signal did that player just send and how should we respond now?” This version of LiveOps is smarter. Less noise. More impact. And it’s built around long-term value, not just short-term spikes.

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TOCA Football just pumped $35 million worth of rocket fuel into its engine, and the trajectory? Think less local rec league, more #ChampionsLeague meets Vegas nightlife. Founded by former Premier League and U.S. Men’s National Team player Eddie Lewis, not the kind of guy who needs to name-drop, because the game does it for him, TOCA started as a garage-born idea built on training with tennis balls. Yeah, you read that right. Small balls, big vision. That “small-ball” tech is now patented, packed into Touch Trainers, lit-up Smart Targets, and digitized in the MyTOCA app. No fluff, just precision, kind of like what happens when sport meets Silicon Valley swagger. So where’s the money going? Let’s start with TOCASocial, an #entertainment concept where #soccer meets the supper club. Venues already buzz in London and Birmingham, with the first U.S. flagship landing in Dallas this year. But that’s just the pregame. This round, $15 million in equity and $20 million in debt from J.P. Morgan Commercial Banking, is setting the stage for a coast-to-coast rollout in the U.S., and a global push that includes franchise moves into Mexico with Ventura Entertainment and Euro-football flavor via Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. Now if you think this is just beer and balls, think again. The other half of the TOCA double act, TOCASoccer, is North America’s largest operator of #indoorsoccer centers with 37 tech-driven training hubs. These aren’t just fields with fancy turf. We're talking performance metrics, object tracking, and AI-layered feedback that turn casual players into data-informed #athletes. That includes their new MyTOCA platform launched April 2025, complete with live leaderboards, skill tracking, and enough #playerdevelopment insight to make a youth coach weep with joy. Behind the scenes, this isn’t just a team of ex-athletes trying to find a second act. CEO Yoshi Maruyama (formerly of Universal and DreamWorks), Chief People Officer Kiy Watts, MBA, and VP Engineering Wayne Rapp are building an engine with the kind of muscle that made Topgolf a household name. And with Erik Anderson, Abby Wambach, Celeste Burgoyne, and Julie Haddon on the board, this is a boardroom with a bench deeper than most VC portfolios. The timing? Impeccable. Soccer’s rise in the U.S. isn’t coming, it’s here. With MLS locked in through 2036, a World Cup landing in 2026, and the youth game exploding, TOCA isn’t just playing in the ecosystem. They're architecting the field. Eddie Lewis didn’t build a soccer company. He built a platform for how the game gets played, watched, and lived. The only thing small about TOCA is the ball. Everything else? Massive. #Startups #StartupFunding #VentureCapital #Sports #SportsTech #Performance #PerformanceTech #Athletics #Soccer #Futbol #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem If engineering peace of mind is what you crave, Vention is your zen.

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DAZN is on a mission to create a single global destination for sport, responding to changing fan behavior, piracy challenges, and the growth of integrated betting in the sports media landscape. CEO Shay Segev emphasizes that this platform aims to revolutionize live sports in the same way Spotify transformed music. #dazn #sportsmedia #sportsbiz #sportsbusiness #sportsmarketing #sponsorship #brandedcontent #mensio #hive https://lnkd.in/gMyA3gJB

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