After receiving applications from across the U.S. and more than 20 countries, Stadia Ventures is excited to announce its Fall 2018 cohort for its sports and esports business accelerator.

The 5 startups entering the Fall 2018 Stadia Accelerator cohort are:

Aireal

(Frisco, TX)
Aireal is a geospatial AR-platform that allows digital content to be instantly placed anywhere in the world and interacted with through mobile technology as if it were part of the real world. Aireal has worked with the Dallas Mavericks, College Football Playoff, Discovery Channel, and more.

Blinder

(Auckland, New Zealand)
Blinder is a call scheduling and recording tool for PR managers. It allows them to provide great access to their ‘talent’, without compromising privacy or performance. Blinder is used by Olympic champions, Grammy winners, and teams from the Premier League of English football to the NCAA.

INFLCR

(Birmingham, AL)
INFLCR is a SaaS platform for sports team properties to store, track and deliver their content across their influencer network of athletes, coaches, former athletes, media and more. In its first year, INFLCR signed with 20+ college, high school, and professional teams, including the University of Miami Football and the University of Kentucky Men’s Basketball teams.

Outdoor Access

(Richmond, VA)
Outdoor Access is Airbnb for land and outdoor recreation. Their platform “Unlocks the Outdoors” by connecting landowners with outdoor enthusiasts for short-term land rental for recreational activities like hunting, fishing, kayaking, and horseback riding. Since its 2016 launch, Outdoor Access has signed up nearly 3,000 members who have accessed 500+ listings and spent almost 10,000 days pursuing their outdoor passions.

Rival.ai

(Toronto, Canada)
Rival.ai is an esports technology company that provides advanced industry standard scouting reports for teams, trainers, and the betting community through the use of artificial intelligence.

The Stadia Ventures Sports Accelerator helps sports and esports startups get to the next level through the combination of equity investment, intensive mentoring, and connections to the top sports and esports business executives in the country. This is the 7th accelerator cohort.

The 14-week business development accelerator program kicked off on September 19th.

Stadia Expands Locations

Applications closed in July, the field was narrowed to 12 early-stage companies. These companies flew into Frisco, TX at the beginning of August to pitch to more than 120 sports, esports and business executives at Stadia’s Finalist Pitch Day. From Finalist Pitch Day, these aforementioned companies emerged.

“Every 6 months, we begin our search yet again for the best sports and esports startups in the world, and this fall, we were simply blown away by the breadth and depth of quality in the applicants,” says co-founder and Managing Director of Stadia Ventures, Tim Hayden.

“Because of that, we had the most competitive selection process yet. So, the fact that these 5 remain today truly speaks to their previous traction and future potential.”

As a part of the program, the cohort will fly to Frisco, TX every other week for three-day sessions. These sessions will consist of executive-level mentoring, top tier guest speakers from across the sports and esports industries, and networking with the Frisco and Dallas business, investor, sports and esports communities.

“We are privileged to have the opportunity to work with the exceptional sports and esports ecosystem down in the Dallas/Frisco area. It took us nearly a year and a half of searching for our first accelerator expansion site, and we couldn’t be more pleased with our decision. We’re incredibly excited to have our companies welcomed into this community,” explained Hayden.