After 16 selected businesses showcased their products during the 2024 Euroleague Basketball FanXP Online Qualifier on July 10, eight projects have advanced to the playoff phase, which will be held at Euroleague Basketball's headquarters in Barcelona, Spain.
These eight companies will pitch their solutions to an external jury made up of four experts from the sports business industry. These individuals will be announced soon.
Afterward, the best four businesses will secure a spot at SPORTBIZ EUROPE: Barcelona Edition in October and will fight for a €10,000 prize to invest in implementing their solutions within the esteemed environments of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague and BKT EuroCup.
Thirty-four applicants were cut down to 16 candidates from 12 different countries, with these companies having the chance to pitch their ideas during the Online Qualifier. The 16 startups had six minutes to pitch their projects, followed by a four-minute Q&A session with members of the jury, which consisted of four Euroleague Basketball executives: Gawain Davies, Senior Director of Corporate Partnerships and Licensing; Alex Ferrer Kristjansson, Senior Director of Marketing and Communications; Diego Fernandez Bonet, Director of Communications; and Joan Carles Ros, Senior Manager of Business Intelligence and Analytics.
Once all the companies had made their pitches, the jury met to share their votes. The eight companies who had the most votes would move on to the next round. The businesses that made the cut are:
Aucxis with STAR Project – Belgium: Leveraging RFID technology to manage reusable cups sustainably at events, enhancing efficiency, customer experience, and compliance with environmental regulations.
Deeptimize – France: Offering precise, real-time sport performance analysis for audience engagement through AI, automatically tagging actions of interest in real-time.
GOAT – Canada: Transforming sports marketing through augmented reality sports gaming, offering immersive experiences and global opportunities for brands.
Lowr – UK: A platform for sports clubs to measure and mitigate the environmental impact of their fans, promoting sustainability and rewarding eco-friendly behaviors.
Neoma – France: An innovative guest management solution for major sports events, integrating data across systems to create a seamless, personalized guest journey.
Retize – Brazil: An AdTech platform turning sports fan engagement into exclusive audiences and effective media activations, solving performance issues caused by third-party cookie deprecation.
Sceenic – UK: Hosting EuroLeague Celebrity Watch Parties on the EuroLeague OTT platform, enabling celebrities and influencers to engage with fans while watching live games.
ZATAP – Switzerland: Connecting physical merchandise products with the digital dimension to create direct-to-consumer interactions, helping brands and sports teams better monetize their customer base.
We congratulate all the chosen candidates and look forward to seeing their innovative contributions to the basketball community.