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Ryan Smith of Utah Jazz, Utah Hockey Club launches new sports-tech investment fund

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Ryan Smith of Utah Jazz, Utah Hockey Club launches new sports-tech investment fund


Ryan Smith and Ryan Sweeney have long had a close relationship that goes beyond just their shared name.

Sweeney, a longtime venture capitalist and partner at Accel, was the first to invest in Qualtrics, the tech company that gave Smith success and the wealth to buy the Utah Jazz. When he did that in 2020, Sweeney came in as a minority owner.

Over the last two years, Sweeney has been pushing Smith to join him on their next big idea, a fund devoted exclusively to the intersection of sports and technology. Finally, he got Smith to budge.

On Tuesday, Smith and Sweeney launched Halo Experience Co., a new investment firm that the two have founded together. The two believe that their sports holdings — and specifically the experiential elements of live events — can be a backbone for their investments and help pull tech companies into that space.

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“Part of the evolution of this experience movement within sports and entertainment is that we are a microcosm of the entire economy,” Smith said. “We’re a healthcare company. The amount of money we’re spending on healthcare is insane within these sports franchises. We’re a payments company. We’re a security company for events and digital and everything else. We’re a streaming company; we have full over-air media, and we’re selling advertising.

“We are in the music industry because people are making money on live events now, not CDs like they used to. So, concerts are everything. We’re a social media company; I think 10 million followers between our brands. You look at the areas that we touch, it’s easy to be like, OK, would we be a buyer of this? Would this help us? Would it help one of our partners?”

While Smith owns the Jazz and Utah Hockey Club, along with Smith Entertainment Group, the firm will be separate from those properties, and it will not be a part of Accel, although it will operate with some of its support. Initial investors include Smith, Sweeney, Sweeney’s Accel partners investing as individuals and limited partners they declined to disclose.

The new firm, which Smith and Sweeney have nicknamed “HXCO,” plans to raise $750 million to $1 billion, Sweeney said, and already has 5-6 deals in its pipeline. The two intend to find companies that they can bring into the sports and live events ecosystem, or have a role in it and invest in them.

Halo Experience would be another example of how the sports world continues to bring in financial capital that had previously remained out of the sector. Private equity companies have started investing in North American professional sports teams in recent years, from the NBA to the NFL, and some, like Arctos Sports Partners, have even deployed funds centered around sports team ownership.

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“There’s two revolutions going on,” Smith said. “One’s definitely in AI, where every venture capital firm is, you know, doing this movement where they’re renaming everything AI, dot ai, which is real and it’s not going away. We’ve also seen this movement in sports. We’ve seen it kind of come from the inverse of what we’re doing. We’re seeing a bunch of funds being created to buy a bunch of sports teams. And I understand why. I think the background of all those people are very different. It’s private equity, it’s everything else.

“We just have a unique background. We come from tech, and we’re still young, and we’re involved. If you look at consumer spending, if you look at where things are going, if you look at what people are prioritizing, everything is around experiences right now, and you know the amount of tech plays that have to tap into that to be successful is enormous. And so we’re bringing this kind of the other way, where, for the first time ever, there’s a tech fund that has the ability to lean into tech, do it with sports on that platform.”

Sweeney believes that the sports investment market is “massive” and growing. The surge in demand for live events since the pandemic has not stopped, Smith said.

They have also seen big tech companies come into the sports world recently and get involved in media, which, Smith believes, has led to media being nationalized and no longer local. Amazon, Netflix and Apple have all grabbed portions or all of significant league media rights packages over the last five years.

The Jazz have been an example of that, as their media distribution deal has morphed in recent years from a cable regional sports network to a combination of an over-the-air channel and a streaming app, Jazz+, both of which have created different needs for technology partnerships.

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The two hope that by using their networks and their resources, they can pull companies into their orbit. The fund is going to be evaluating both early-stage and later-stage opportunities.

“This is going to be a fund that harnesses the power of sports, and it’s real, and it’s a real movement,” Sweeney said. “And as we started this conversation, you compare and contrast with a movement like AI, which gets a lot of press within the tech ecosystem right now, the size of this economy is very similar, and I would say, oftentimes less competitive, right?

“You can go disrupt it, and you can go become a player that gains significant market share relatively quickly as an investor, and that’s all you’re looking for. You’re looking for big untapped markets, and this feels like one where disruption from technology is certainly there for the taking.”

(Photo: Alex Goodlett / Getty Images)



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Why is Bill Simmons so sure the Utah Jazz will draft Cameron Boozer?

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Why is Bill Simmons so sure the Utah Jazz will draft Cameron Boozer?


For most people familiar with the Utah Jazz, the answer to who the Jazz will select with the No. 2 overall pick comes down to whoever the Washington Wizards don’t select: AJ Dybantsa or Darryn Peterson.

But one prominent NBA media figure seems dead set in his stance that the Jazz will select Duke big man Cameron Boozer. For Bill Simmons, it’s not if the Jazz take Boozer, it’s when.

“I would bet anything AJ (Dybantsa) is the first pick… and I think Boozer goes two,” Simmons said on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” on Saturday night.

This wasn’t the first time that Simmons expressed his confidence in the Jazz selecting Boozer. On a June 8 episode of his podcast, Simmons expressed his hunch that Boozer would end up in Utah.

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“I think Danny (Ainge) is such a wildcard at second,” Simmons said. “He did it with (Jayson) Tatum, he did it with (Jaylen) Brown, he did it when he was going to take Durant, he over and over again looks at the high end talent guys and is able to project them. You would think it’s going to happen with Peterson, but I think there’s too many red flags. I think he’s going to stay away from Peterson. I could see him taking Boozer at two. That would be my minus-130 bet right now. I might be wrong, but I really think they’re gonna take Boozer, I do. I can’t explain it.”

Later on, Simmons explained that the Jazz’s front office knows the families of Dybantsa and Boozer incredibly well, know that the two like playing in Utah — something that should never be taken for granted — and that Peterson is too much of a wildcard to take a swing on.

J. Kyle Mann, an NBA draft analyst for The Ringer who was Simmons’ guest on the June 8 episode did not echo this sentiment.

“I think the Jazz will take Peterson. I’ve heard they like Peterson, I’ve heard Danny likes Peterson,” Mann said.

Boozer was the national player of the year in his lone collegiate season at Duke, averaging an insane freshman stat line of 22.5 points, 10.2 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game. Boozer’s high IQ and rebounding are two of his biggest strengths, while his defense and perceived lower athletic ability leave some teams hesitant on drafting the former Blue Devil.

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The NBA Draft will be held on June 23 at 8 ET in Brooklyn, N.Y.



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Scientists Detected Strange Rumbling Beneath Utah Almost 50 Years Ago. They Just Figured Out What It Was

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Scientists Detected Strange Rumbling Beneath Utah Almost 50 Years Ago. They Just Figured Out What It Was


A mysterious earthquake deep below northern Utah had scientists scratching their heads back in 1979. The rumble seemingly occurred far lower beneath the Earth’s crust than scientists had believed was possible.

The tremor may not have been particularly strong, at a magnitude of 3.8, but the recorded seismic data threw experts for a loop nonetheless. The data suggested the rumbling had occurred over 55 miles below sea level, a depth that made no sense in conventional geology.

“I did some other analysis that convinced me of the reality of the deep depth but it was hard to convince others of the highly anomalous mantle earthquake occurring in a region where none should exist,” said George Zandt, who was a University of Utah seismology researcher at the time and helped record the unusual quake, in a new statement.

Now, as detailed in a study published earlier this year in the journal The Seismic Record, University of Utah geology professor Keith Koper and Zandt — who came out of retirement for the new investigation — analyzed eight subsequent “deep earthquakes” in the region, confirming they occurred in the Earth’s upper mantle, dozens of miles below the boundary of the crust.

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Koper and his colleagues say they’ve determined that the quakes are an “archetypal continental mantle event,” meaning they’re related to movements in the Earth’s mantle that take place over extremely long time scales.

The research highlights how much there’s still to learn about these forceful tectonic dynamics deep inside the planet, and how surprisingly different they are from more shallow, crust-based seismic events.

“It’s sort of a mystery in terms of fundamental physics,” Koper said in a statement. “How in the world can these things happen?”

“Another reason why it’s a big deal is that we have no idea how big they can be,” he added. “With crustal earthquakes, we can measure what we think their maximum size is going to be. We measure the faults that we can map out near the surface.”

Unlike earthquakes that occur in the Earth’s curst, deep earthquakes don’t announce themselves through foreshocks and aftershocks. The team determined they occur at the western edge of the Wyoming Craton — a leftover block of our planet’s lithosphere, the rigid outermost shell of the Earth, which stretches across northern Utah and southwest Wyoming — where temperatures can exceed 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit.

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The team suspects these new “deep quakes” could be caused by the mantle slowly squeezing by the Wyoming Craton.

“On the scale of millions of years, the mantle is hitting the craton and then flowing around it,” Koper explained. “It’s that interaction where that mantle flow is being diverted around this hard cratonic root that’s causing the increased strain rate, the increased deformation and it’s also creating extra stresses.”

“We think it’s that interaction between the keel of the iceberg and the medium around it that’s leading to these earthquakes,” he added.

More on earthquakes: California Primed for Apocalyptic Earthquake, Geological Research Finds

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Life jackets can make difference between life and death, officials say

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Life jackets can make difference between life and death, officials say


HURRICANE, Utah (ABC4) — With Summer in full swing, more people are heading to Utah’s lakes and reservoirs to cool off. However, with more water-related deaths across the state this year, officials are reminding people that using a life jacket often makes the difference.

As temperatures climb, Sand Hollow State Park is filled with boaters, paddleboarders and swimmers looking to cool off. With more people hitting the water, natural resource officers are reminding visitors to know the rules and make safety a priority.

“This year is looking like one of the deadliest,” resource officer Chris Nelson told ABC4.com. “If you look back far enough, not so far ago, having five fatalities was a whole summer’s worth across multiple different fields of recreation, from hiking and search and rescue operations to OHV and boating, and we’re looking at that now just from boating, and it’s the beginning of June. Not a great start.”

“Every kid 12 and under does have to be wearing a life jacket at all times,” natural resource officer Chad Tarr added. “There needs to be a life jacket for everyone accounted on board of a paddle craft or a vessel at all times as well.”

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For Rex Johnson, a local in Southern Utah, life jackets aren’t just for people. He and his wife visit Sand Hollow several times a week and ensure their two dogs wear jackets every time they hit the water, too.

“We were out here one day, and there were a lot of waves, and so she went after a Frisbee but couldn’t see it, and she just kept circling and circling, and it made me nervous. I didn’t know how long she could just circle, so we decided at that point to get them life jackets,” he recounted.

Johnson added that he wishes more people had the same approach. “What I noticed is the people that are out here on the stand up paddleboard, they rarely wear a life jacket. So that kind of makes me nervous,” he said.

Shelly Mackun teaches diving classes at Sand Hollow and said even the most experienced swimmers can find themselves in trouble in the water.

“You get out, and it’s a hundred degrees outside, and you jump in the water, and the water right now is about 74-ish. That’s considered cold water, and especially when your body is overheated, and you jump in, you’re likely to gasp, and as you do that, you’re going to swallow some water,” Mackun said.

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She added, “I always have some flotation on because it’s not always just about you that other things can happen. You can get knocked in the head. You can buy a paddle from somebody paddleboarding. You can slip off your paddleboard and fall in the water, and again, that hot air temperature with the cold water temperature can be a deadly mix.”

State officials said that most of this year’s drowning victims were not wearing life jackets and hope more people will make them a normal part of their time on the water this Summer.



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