Live-streaming platform SportsCastr has received investment from the players’ union of American football league the NFL.
The NFL Players Association, via its athlete-driven accelerator the OneTeam Collective, has acquired a minority stake in the company. Through the partnership, active and former NFL players will use SportsCastr to provide live commentary across a wide range of professional and collegiate sports, along with sharing their own personal insights.
ACE Media, the NFLPA’s content and production arm, will collaborate with SportsCastr to produce NFL player and other athlete-driven content featured on the SportsCastr platform.
In June, SportsCastr unveiled FanChain, a cryptocurrency developed for the global sports market. FanChain allows SportsCastr users to earn tokens for participating on the platform, and those tokens can then be used to unlock premium NFL player content, purchase sports tickets or merchandise, and send virtual gifts to NFL players.
Although SportsCastr is the first platform to support FanChain, the company said it is working with teams, media publishers and leagues to add FanChain support, with the aim of making it the ubiquitous token within the sports industry.
As part of the NFLPA agreement, SportsCastr becomes an official licensee of the union in the categories of mobile apps and web-based platforms that allow users to discuss a variety of sports topics, including through video streams and chats.
SportsCastr is the eighth active NFLPA partner secured through the OneTeam Collective, which is designed to give innovative early stage companies the opportunity to leverage the NFLPA’s exclusive group player rights, in exchange for equity.
Washington Redskins tight end Vernon Davis (pictured), a SportsCastr investor and advisor, said in a statement: “Fans are looking for new ways to engage with the game of football and us, the athletes. SportsCastr’s live streaming platform is a cool and fun way for fans to add their own voice to games while engaging with players in a different way.
“As players we see the value in sharing more of our personalities and unique content with fans and we’re excited about where this live stream tech is headed.”
The first NFL players will begin using the platform in the third quarter of 2018 and SportsCastr chief executive Kevin April believes his platform offers benefits over established players in the sports streaming market.
“Other platforms like Facebook Live are not really live,” April told the Forbeswebsite. “Facebook Live, for example, has latency of 13-plus seconds. This means if that if fans or athletes share commentary on Facebook Live while a game is on — and if someone is viewing that commentary stream on a second-screen while watching the game — the commentary will be delayed and the viewer will hear the fan or athlete yell “GOOOAAAAALLLL” over 10 seconds after they watched the goal happen on TV. On SportsCastr, we’ve designed the platform for sub-second latency that is scalable to millions of viewers.”