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Tag: Sports Equipment

  • Sports Technology That’s Revolutionizing Sports in 2024 – Tech and Training – Southwest Journal

    Sports Technology That’s Revolutionizing Sports in 2024 – Tech and Training – Southwest Journal

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    Technology and sports colliding is the age-old tale of a grand spectacle of innovation, drama, and, of course, a hefty dose of skepticism. 

    In 2024, the terrain of sports tech is as dynamic as a high-speed tennis serve, seemingly breaking the sound barrier with its advancements. But let’s cut through the hype and take a cheeky peek at what’s shaking up the world of sports and technology that might change how we view it forever.

    The Players in the Game

    The Players in the Game

    Before we jump into the deep end, let’s get our bearings straight. From fans perched on their couches to athletes sprinting on the track and the coaches strategizing behind the scenes to the support staff making it all happen, technology in sports is a big deal for a lot of people. 

    Each stakeholder has skin in the game, and technology is the wild card promising to up the ante. In sports and entertainment, platforms like JallaCasino are becoming increasingly popular among fans, offering a digital playground that mirrors the excitement and competitive spirit found in the physical realm of sports.

    The Tech Line-Up

    Tech Innovations Transforming the SportingTech Innovations Transforming the Sporting

    Gadgets

    Wearable tech isn’t just for Silicon Valley enthusiasts anymore. Athletes are decked out with the latest fitness watches, heart rate monitors, and sports helmets that look like they’ve been ripped right out of a sci-fi flick. 

    These aren’t just fashion statements; they’re the coaches’ eyes and ears on the ground (or, more accurately, on the athlete). These gadgets are also awesome for statistical measurements of the athletes’ performance. They can track the progress and advancements in training, which is super important for taking everything to the next level.

    Behind the Scenes

    The backbone of sports tech is less visible but no less revolutionary. GPS sensors, VBT (Velocity-Based Training) sensors, and sleep tracking devices are gathering data faster than a sports commentator spits out statistics. 

    This data isn’t just for show—it’s changing the game in ways that might not be apparent right from the get-go, but long-term, is very important.

    Injury Prevention

    Remember when a ‘good rub’ and ‘walking it off’ were the go-to remedies? Welcome to 2024, where sports medicine and injury prevention tech, like advanced mouthguards and helmets, look to keep athletes in play rather than in recovery.

    The Digital Referee

    VAR (Video Assistant Referee) and GLT (Goal Line Technology) are ensuring that the only controversies left in sports are whether pineapple belongs on pizza (it doesn’t). Fairness is finally getting a fair shot.

    However, technology such as VAR created tons of controversy, especially in sports such as soccer. Many fans and analysts believed that VAR was disrupting the flow of the game and creating unnecessary pauses.

    Still, this was the case when the technology was implemented initially, and since then, many have changed their minds and accepted the advantages it brings to the table.

    Virtual and Cognitive Training

    Virtual reality isn’t just for gamers. It’s carving out a niche in athlete training programs, offering simulations that are as close to the real thing as you can get without the risk of injury. 

    Cognitive training technology, meanwhile, is ensuring that athletes’ minds are as fit as their bodies, enhancing decision-making skills under pressure. It is another step in the right direction, as it prepares athletes for specific situations they might experience on the court.

    The Business Side of Things

    Navigating the Commercial Terrain of Tech In SportNavigating the Commercial Terrain of Tech In Sport

    Involving the Digital Fanbase

    Digital fan engagement tools have transformed spectators into active participants, making watching sports a 360-degree experience. Apps and platforms have brought fans closer to their teams, fostering a sense of community that spans the globe. 

    The viewing experience was never better, and one of the shining examples of this technology is, for example, the NBA app that allows viewers to spectate the game as if they were courtside. Basketball has never looked better.

    Sports Analytics: A Data-Driven Approach

    The sports business is booming, thanks in part to advancements in data analytics and sports tech. Hawk-eye sensors and instant replay technology are ensuring that every move is monitored, analyzed, and, yes, debated in forums worldwide.

    This also gives analysts chances to analyze games on a deeper level and get statistics insights they were not able to before.

    The Training Room of the Future

    The Futuristic Training ArenaThe Futuristic Training Arena

    Virtual Reality

    From the NHL to the NFL, virtual reality training is becoming mainstream. Platforms like Sense Arena are offering over 50 drills to sharpen skills, with endorsements from sports legends like Patrik Elias highlighting their impact.

    As I already mentioned, this is a quality-of-life improvement for athletes who want to improve their game in different areas.

    Robotics

    FORPHEUS, the ping-pong-playing robot, and the Mobile Virtual Player (MVP), a robotic dummy for football practice, are not just novelties. 

    They represent a leap toward safer, more efficient training methods that challenge athletes in new and innovative ways. As the tech advances, these robots and dummies are getting better and present more challenges to athletes, therefore, giving them more opportunities to grow.

    Wearable Tech and Smart Clothes

    Wearable technology has become more than a trend; it’s a tool that enhances athletic performance through leaps and bounds. 

    Real-time sensors provide instant feedback, making training sessions more productive and personalized. This allows athletes to improve their abilities in areas in which statistics and analytics lead them.

    Exploring the global landscape of athletics, it becomes evident how advancements in sports technology have played a pivotal role in shaping the triumphs and popularity of various athletic pursuits.

    The Bottom Line

    So, is the integration of technology in sports a revolution or just a flashy distraction? Well, it seems the answer is a bit of both. For every groundbreaking advancement that promises to change the game, there’s a healthy dose of skepticism. Yet, one thing is clear: the world of sports in 2024 is more connected, more fair, and, dare I say, more exciting than ever.

    While the purists may argue that technology is taking the soul out of the game, the pragmatists will point to enhanced performance, injury prevention, and engagement opportunities as undeniable benefits. 

    In the end, whether you’re a fan, an athlete, or part of the vast support network, the fusion of tech and sports is creating a new playbook—one that’s being rewritten with each passing season.

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    Petar Senjo

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  • Micron, Peloton, GameStop, Workday, Nike, CarMax, and More Stock Market Movers

    Micron, Peloton, GameStop, Workday, Nike, CarMax, and More Stock Market Movers

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    This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.

    https://www.barrons.com/articles/stock-market-movers-299270e4

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  • After fighting over connected fitness, Peloton and Lululemon join forces

    After fighting over connected fitness, Peloton and Lululemon join forces

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    Peloton Interactive’s stock jumped after hours Wednesday after the connected-exercise-bike maker and yoga-wear giant Lululemon Athletica announced a five-year partnership that will combine digital fitness with workout and athleisure gear starting next month.

    The move comes as the fitness industry recalibrates after a boom and bust in at-home workouts due to the pandemic, and after Peloton
    PTON,
    +0.65%
    and Lululemon
    LULU,
    -0.40%
    tried to compete with each other directly on connected fitness. But as part of the deal, Lululemon will stop selling its Lululemon Studio Mirror — its answer to Peloton’s pairing of exercise equipment and exercise videos — before the end of the year.

    Shares of Peloton climbed 13.3% after hours Wednesday. Lululemon’s stock was up 0.3% after hours.

    Under the partnership, Peloton will become the “exclusive digital fitness content provider” for Lululemon. Lululemon, meanwhile, will become Peloton’s “primary athletic-apparel partner.” Some Peloton instructors will also promote Lululemon’s clothing as part of the arrangement.

    The partnership will target customers across North America, the U.K., Germany and Australia. Starting Oct. 11, co-branded clothing across Lululemon’s products will be available at Peloton stores and online in the United States, the U.K. and Canada, and in Peloton’s markets by March. Beginning Nov. 1, Lululemon Studio All-Access Members will have access to Peloton classes.

    “Our two companies share a vision to advance wellbeing through movement, and this partnership ensures our lululemon Studio Members will have access to the most expansive and dynamic offering of fitness content possible,” Celeste Burgoyne, Lululemon’s president for the Americas and global guest innovation, said in a statement.

    Lululemon bought Mirror — an interactive fitness company that displayed workout videos and fitness data on an actual mirror — for $500 million in 2020, when much of the world still faced pandemic-related restrictions.

    Then, lockdowns eased and pre-pandemic habits returned. Gyms reopened. Peloton started getting into trouble. It has cut jobs, shaken up leadership and announced a recall of 2 million exercise bikes due to injury risks. Shares of the company have fallen more than 90% since late 2020.

    Lululemon stock, however, has run higher since that time. Some analysts last year said that clothing made by the company was less prone to a broader apparel discounting frenzy. During its most recent round of earnings, Lululemon raised its full-year outlook despite what it called a “dynamic operating environment.”

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  • Inflation puts tighter squeeze on already pricey kids sports

    Inflation puts tighter squeeze on already pricey kids sports

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    It only took a few seconds for Rachel Kennedy to grab her phone after she left the checkout line at the sporting-goods store, where she had just finished buying a new glove, pants, belt, cleats and the rest of the equipment for her son, Liam’s, upcoming baseball season.

    “I texted his dad and asked him, ‘Did we really spend $350 on all this last year?’” Kennedy said.

    Sticker shock in youth sports is nothing new, but the onslaught of double-digit inflation across America this year has added a costly wrinkle on the path to the ballparks, swimming pools and dance studios across America. It has forced some families, like Kennedy’s, to scale back the number of seasons, or leagues, or sports that their kids can play in any given year, while motivating league organizers to become more creative in devising ways to keep prices down and participation up.

    Recent studies, conducted before inflation began impacting daily life across America, showed families spent around $700 a year on kids’ sports, with travel and equipment accounting for the biggest portion of the expense.

    Everyone from coaches to swim-meet coordinators are struggling to to find less-expensive ways of keeping families coming through the doors. Costs of uniforms and equipment, along with facility rental, are shooting up — all products of the onslaught of supply-chain issues, hard-to-find staff, lack of coaches and rising gas and travel costs that were exacerbated, or sometimes caused, by the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted and sometimes canceled seasons altogether. The annual inflation rate for the 12 months ending in September was 8.2%.

    Kennedy, who lives in Monroe, Ohio, and describes her family as “on the lower end of middle class,” opted Liam out of summer and fall ball, not so much because of the fees to join the leagues but because “those don’t include all the equipment you need.”

    “And gas prices have gotten to the point where we don’t have the bandwidth to drive one or two hours away” for the full slate of weekend games and tournaments that dot the typical youth baseball schedule each season. The Kennedys rarely stayed the night in hotels for multi-day tournaments.

    A study published by The Aspen Institute that was conducted before COVID-19 said on average across all sports, parents already spent more each year on travel ($196 per child, per sport) than any other facet of the sport: equipment, lessons, registration, etc. A number of reports say hotel prices in some cities are around 30% higher than last year, and about the same amount higher than in 2019, before the start of the pandemic.

    At the venues, it costs more to hire umpires to call the games, groundskeepers to keep fields ready, janitors to clean indoor venues and coaches to run practices. Even sports that are traditionally on the less-expensive end of the spectrum are running into issues.

    “You talk to people and you say ‘What do you mean you get $28 an hour to be a lifeguard?’” said Steve Roush, a former leader in the Olympic world who now serves as executive director of Southern California Swimming, which sanctions meets across one of America’s most expensive regions. “The going rate has just gone through the roof, and that’s if you can find somebody at all. And that accounts for part of the big gap” in prices for swimming meets today versus three years ago.

    One Denver-area dance studio director, who did not want her name used because of the competitive nature of her business, said she started looking for new uniform suppliers as a way of keeping costs down for families. Some destinations for the two out-of-state competitions that are typical in a given season have been shifted to cities that have more — and, so, less expensive — flight options. Some of those teams only make a third trip, this one to a major competition, if it receives a “paid” invitation.

    “The cost is just so much to ask them to travel a third time,” the director said. “And oftentimes you don’t know that you’re getting that bid until February or March and you have to turn around and travel to it in April, and that turnaround just makes it very hard from an expense standpoint.”

    At stake is the future of a youth-sports industry that generated around $20 billion, according to one estimate, before COVID-19 sharply curtailed spending in 2020.

    Also, inflation is giving some families a chance to revisit an issue that first came up when COVID-19 more or less canceled all youth leagues for a year or more.

    “There was some optimism that maybe families would be like, ‘OK, let’s maybe have a more balanced approach to how we’re going to participate in sports,'” said Jennifer Agans, an assistant professor at Penn State who studies the impact of youth sports. “But until this economic wave, everyone was so excited to go back to normal that we forgot the lessons we learned from slowing our lives down. Maybe this gives another chance to reevaluate that.”

    It’s a choice not everyone wants to make, but still one that is being imposed more on people in the middle and lower class. Another Aspen Institute report from before the pandemic concluded children from low-income families were half as likely to play sports as kids from upper-income families.

    Kennedy said she has long been fortunate to have a supportive family — including grandparents who chip in to defray some costs of Liam’s baseball. But some things had to go. A spot on a travel team can reach up to $1,200, and that’s before equipment and travel, “and we just don’t have that kind of money,” Kennedy said.

    Still, Liam loves baseball and sitting it out altogether wasn’t a real choice.

    “It’s the whole parental, ‘I’ll go hungry to make sure my kids get what they need’ situation,’” Kennedy said. “So if I give up my Starbucks, or some little extras for me, then it’s worth it to make sure he gets to play. But it’s certainly not getting any less expensive.”

    ———

    AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

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  • A Tesla stock plunge could destroy ‘zombie stocks’ such as GameStop and Peloton, warns equity research firm New Constructs

    A Tesla stock plunge could destroy ‘zombie stocks’ such as GameStop and Peloton, warns equity research firm New Constructs

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    Tesla shares could decline dramatically — and that could mean disaster for a number of stocks that have already seen deep share-price cuts, according to equity research firm New Constructs.

    The research firm, which uses machine learning and natural language processing to parse corporate filings and model economic earnings, called the stocks in danger “zombie stocks,” and defined them as companies with poor business models that are burning cash at an alarming rate and are at risk of seeing their stock decline to $0 per share.

    The research firm estimates there could be some 300 zombie companies across the marketplace.

    “The Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate hikes so far in 2022 have ended the era of free money and exposed a worrisome dynamic throughout capital markets: zombie stocks,” wrote New Constructs CEO David Trainer, in a note.

    See Now: Tesla earnings are coming, but do record deliveries mask a demand problem?

    New Constructs does not define Tesla Inc.
    TSLA,
    +7.01%
    as a “zombie stock,” citing CEO Elon Musk’s ability to raise capital, but does see the electric car manufacturer as a bellwether for the sector. “It shares many of the common characteristics of a zombie stock, such as an outrageous valuation and high cash burn,” wrote Trainer. “We believe Tesla’s unrelenting share price rise over the past three years – where investors completely ignored company fundamentals – inspired the birth of many of today’s zombie stocks.” 

    Tesla reports its third-quarter results after the closing bell on Oct. 19.

    The company’s stock was trading around $220 on Monday, an increase of over 1,000% compared to three years ago. But Trainer feels that Tesla is at risk of falling more than 80% to $25 a share.

    Tesla’s Optimus bot: ‘High school science project’ or robotics game changer?

    Tesla’s stock has fallen 37.6% in 2022, outpacing the S&P 500 Index’s
    SPX,
    +2.65%
    decline of 22.7%.

    “Its valuation remains nosebleed high because the cash flow expectations baked into the stock price are unreasonably optimistic,” Trainer wrote. “Our message to investors is to take profits in Tesla and avoid zombie stocks at all costs.”

    New Constructs recently added cloud-based communication company RingCentral Inc.
    RNG,
    +6.49%
    to its list of “zombie” stocks. Other companies on the list are Freshpet Inc.
    FRPT,
    -2.03%    ,
     Peloton Interactive Inc.
    PTON,
    +7.04%    ,
     Carvana Co.
    CVNA,
    +6.30%    ,
     Snap Inc.
    SNAP,
    +6.01%    ,
     Beyond Meat Inc.
    BYND,
    +0.64%    ,
     Rivian Automotive Inc.
    RIVN,
    +6.93%    ,
     DoorDash Inc.
    DASH,
    +6.15%    ,
     Shake Shack Inc.
    SHAK,
    +4.01%    ,
     Chewy Inc.
    CHWY,
    +10.76%    ,
     Uber Technologies Inc.
    UBER,
    +4.98%    ,
     Robinhood Markets Inc.
    HOOD,
    +3.24%    ,
     Tilray Brands Inc.
    TLRY,
    +7.32%    ,
     Affirm Holdings Inc.
    AFRM,
    +6.72%    ,
     SunRun Inc.
    RUN,
    +1.70%    ,
     Blue Apron Holdings Inc.
    APRN,
    +3.26%    ,
     and meme stocks AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. 
    AMC,
    +6.00%
    and GameStop Corp.
    GME,
    +5.40%    .

    See Now: RingCentral added to ‘zombie’ stocks list by equity research firm New Constructs

    “Investors are now fed up with these kinds of companies, especially amid this year’s stock market volatility,” wrote New Constructs’ Trainer. “If investors start to give up on Tesla and take profits on the stock, which is up over 1,000% over the past three years, that spells terrible news for all of the other zombie stocks that don’t have the cash-raising luxury that Tesla has.”  

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  • WSJ News Exclusive | Peloton Co-Founder John Foley Faced Repeated Margin Calls From Goldman Sachs as Stock Slumped

    WSJ News Exclusive | Peloton Co-Founder John Foley Faced Repeated Margin Calls From Goldman Sachs as Stock Slumped

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    John Foley, the co-founder and former chief executive of Peloton Interactive faced repeated margin calls on money he borrowed against his Peloton holdings before he left the fitness company’s board last month, according to people familiar with the situation.

    As Peloton’s shares slumped over the past year, Goldman Sachs Group asked Mr. Foley several times to provide fresh funds or additional collateral for personal loans the bank had extended to him, the people said. The company’s share price has fallen nearly 95% from its $160 peak in December 2020.

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  • For Long-Term Investors, It’s Time to Buy Tech Again. Here Are 20 Stocks to Look at First.

    For Long-Term Investors, It’s Time to Buy Tech Again. Here Are 20 Stocks to Look at First.

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    One cruel truth the stock market confirmed this past week is that trying to pick the bottom for technology stocks is a fool’s errand. The Nasdaq Composite’s terrible September—it was down 10.5% on the month—has made the bottom-fishing that took place over the summer look ill-advised. As I’ve noted before, the first downturn in tech earlier this year was all about valuations. This new phase of the decline is all about softening earnings. When it comes to price-to-earnings ratios, the market is running into a denominator problem.

    The market downturn, the weaker economy, and the reversal of some pandemic-era trends have exposed weaknesses in the business models of companies such as


    Peloton Interactive


    (ticker: PTON),


    Zoom Video Communications


    (ZM),


    Shopify


    (SHOP),


    Affirm Holdings


    (AFRM), and


    Snap


    (SNAP), and investors have adjusted valuations accordingly. But there are still some powerful underlying secular trends that should eventually drive tech stocks higher. Investors with long time horizons and strong stomachs might consider inching into the market. I have a few ideas on where to look.

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