Month: February 2023

What sets Comcast Sports Tech apart is very much the partner and the intimacy that it’s created within that it’s not just a mentor is not just a name on a board or a one phone call in three months as a sort of stepwise process, which is really unique across the accelerators that I’ve been involved in. And so I think there’s a huge value out of that, specifically on the personal relationships that are going to be built with really influential partners.

Being a part of the Comcast sports accelerator for USA Cycling allows us to have a lens into what’s coming, what innovations are happening, what technology is out there.How do we become better at our business? How do we get better at providing or providing our athletes with some of the best technology to make them faster, providing our members with new and innovative ways to engage on the bike and engage with communities.

It’s really nice to be in the early stage of the development of a technology and to feel like we have partnership in the development. This has given us the opportunity to connect with numerous companies that are early enough stage that we can help. We can communicate the needs that we have and they can try to solve those problems. And so for us, being a partner and being involved at an early stage as opposed to being just the consumer is a really nice integration and is a very productive way for us to work.

Sometimes you think you’ve seen it all. But when you look at the companies that are in this accelerator program, they are doing things that are extremely innovative. We’ve been exposed to things in Esports that we were not aware of, that we had not even thought of. We’ve been exposed to new technologies to use to automate better production of live sports.

We spent a week nurturing connects between the startup founders and heavyweight sports partners including WWE, US Olympics, Sky Sports, NASCAR, PGA Tour, NBC Sports.Biggest learning isn’t a surprise…The conversations that happened over a sandwich, in the queues and in the “between-times” were the most powerful. It’s not always possible but it’s hugely powerful to “sleep on it”, to allow other conversations to add layers of context and to just plain get to know each other. Something we don’t seem to value or plan for in today’s hectic digital business landscape.

The Comcast Sports Tech Accelerator provides a really unique opportunity to interact with high potential companies at the cutting edge of sports and entertainment innovation. And it’s not just interacting with those companies, it’s getting to ideate with those companies and think about what their future looks like.

For us to be able to be a part of the accelerator and to see what these entrepreneurs are creating and then to be able to just work alongside them to help kind of slightly, you know, maybe help them take a little bit of a left or a right to really get their product to a place that is going to make an immediate impact. I think that’s been a huge opportunity for us.