NBA Summer League Starts With Three Straight Sellouts In Las Vegas; NBA Tech Launchpad Program Names Seven Companies

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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer

The NBA Summer League broke a new attendance barrier this weekend.

For the first time, the Summer League in Las Vegas has three consecutive sellouts of 17,500.

The NBA Summer League had back-to-back sellouts July 5 and 6 in 2019, but the Woodstock of Roundball has started off the 2023 event with back-to-back-to-back sellouts.

All 30 NBA teams are here, with just-drafted players and second-year players trying to make a name for themselves.

But the Summer League is more than basketball games at Thomas & Mack and Cox Pavilion on the UNLV campus.

For a second year in a row, the NBA is holding its technology launchpad with a NBA Tech Expo set for Tuesday.

Seven launchpad companies have been announced:

Advancing The Game
• SkillCorner (Paris, France): Technology that uses computer vision and machine learning to
generate player tracking data from existing video feeds.
• Springbok Analytics (Charlottesville, Virginia): AI-based technology that transforms MRI
data into a 3D digital twin, quantifying an athlete’s musculature for precision health and
performance optimization.
• Supersapiens (Atlanta, Georgia): Technology that analyzes glucose data to inform athletes
how nutrition impacts their well-being, sleep and athletic performance.
Enhancing The Fan Experience

• Action Audio (Victoria, Australia): Technology that transforms spatial data into information-
rich 3D sound experiences, helping blind/low vision audiences to follow sport in real time.

• EDGE Sound Research (Riverside, California): Embodied sound technology that leverages
standard audio inputs to produce audible, haptic and tactile sensation directly to a fan within an
arena or at home for sports, music and gaming.
• nVenue (Houston, Texas): Sports betting platform that uses machine learning and AI to
generate game-relevant probabilities and micro-bets for fans to engage with in real-time.
• Tagboard (Redmond, Washington): Audience experience platform designed to help
production teams create the most engaging content in the world with a fraction of the resources
required by traditional graphics systems.

Scenes from around Day 2 of Summer League:

Walt “Clyde” Frazier is in the house. No, not true. But Frazier, the former Knicks great, has been here in the past as part of broadcasts.

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They were here last year at Summer League and they’re back with even a better spot on the concourse. Read our story on the business  that allows you to design your own sneaker.

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Nice to see NBA Summer League founder Warren LeGarie has his own parking spot. Hope Albert Hall has one, too.

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Speaking of Silver, he today officially announced Las Vegas will host the semis and final of an in-season NBA tournament Dec.7 and 9. ESPN told us about this last week.

For the 2023-24 season, the In-Season Tournament prize pool will be allocated to the players on the  teams that participate in the Knockout Rounds as follows:

• Players on winning team of Championship: $500,000 each

• Players on losing team of Championship: $200,000 each

• Players on losing team of Semifinals: $100,000 each

• Players on losing team of Quarterfinals: $50,000 each


 

Alan Snel

Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.