Data (on the) Lake: DeepMind Hackathon Becomes Como 1907's Latest Initiative to be More than a Football Club đ§
Plus, Chelsea become first Premier League and WSL club to launch an official Strava presence and MLB signs Indian cricket star Suryakumar Yadav as ambassador...
Hello and welcome to the Sports Pundit Newsletter,
Last week finished with a wonderful afternoon with John Grabowski & co. at Dagenham and Redbridge FC for the inaugural Sports Pundit Football Media Summit.
However, that already feels a long time ago as my attention has had to shift immediately to the upcoming Como Cup, where The Players Fund (via Como Ventures) is helping to put on some of the non-football related activities, including a Hackathon, supported by Google DeepMind.
I try not to cover my own work too much (I donât want to be that guy), but this one is a pretty cool amalgamation of a lot of different areas coming together, and probably the truest indicator yet of our mantra to âjust keep adding value,â paying off.
Hereâs whatâs coming up:
Como 1907 and Como Ventures to Host Data on the Lake đ§
Chelsea become first PL and WSL club to launch on Strava đ
MLB signs Suryakumar Yadav to crack the Indian market đ
Letâs get into it!
HACKATHON
On 24â25 July, Como 1907 and Como Ventures will host Data on the Lake, a two-day AI hackathon developed with Google DeepMind that will give external technical talent access to a real Como 1907 dataset and real football problem sets, positioning the club as an R&D platform rather than a consumer of AI tools.
The event takes place immediately before the second edition of Football on the Lake, and was open by application to data scientists, machine learning engineers, developers, and sports technology professionals.
In just three days, Data on the Lake drew 606 applicants, from 26 different countries, across elite football, frontier AI and global tech. Applications came from employees representing the likes of Apple, Wayve, and Bending Spoons, as well as sporting organisations like the BWT Alpine F1 Team and Bundesliga.
Under the theme âThe Future of Football Intelligenceâ, teams will compete across two prize categories (technical innovation and practical utility), using a curated Como 1907 dataset alongside frontier AI tooling.
Data on the Lake builds on the momentum of Como Ventures, the startup and investment platform launched by Como 1907 and The Players Fund in September 2025.
Why It Matters
Most professional football clubs are consumers of AI. They buy tools from vendors and occasionally build small in-house data teams. The technical talent doing the actual innovation sits elsewhere, and the club is the customer at the end of the value chain.
However, by opening its dataset and problem sets to external talent, and pairing them with DeepMindâs involvement, Como 1907 is inverting that relationship and becoming the venue where tools get built.
That matters for a few reasons.
First, real football data and real problems separate genuinely useful AI in sport from vendor-driven pitches. Access to those inputs is one of the more valuable assets a club has, and most keep it behind closed doors. Opening it up (even in a controlled setting) changes what technical builders can produce.
Second, the format signals what a modern football club can be beyond the pitch. Como 1907 has built itself into something closer to a media, tech, and investment platform, with Como Ventures now a core part of that ecosystem. The football operation is the anchor, but is part of a wider platform.
Lastly, itâs worth saying that few clubs have a frontier AI lab willing to associate with them (even for a one-off event). For technical talent, that signals this isnât a marketing exercise and is likely why applications came in so fast, from senior ML engineers, product leads, and research scientists.
While I appreciate that not every club has the infrastructure to host an event like this, the underlying model and philosophy does transfer.
On reading this, the question that sports organisations should be asking when they see this is whether they see themselves as buyers of technology or as environments where technology can get built and/ or amplified.
(Disclosure: I head up Corporate Venture at The Players Fund, which co-founded and operates Como Ventures).
HIGHLIGHTS - SUPPORTED BY THE ATTENTION SHIFT
Chelsea become first Premier League and WSL club to launch an official Strava presence đ
Chelsea have partnered with Strava to launch an official club presence on the platform, offering supporters running challenges, training content and community events tied to both the menâs and womenâs teams, with activation planned across both pre-season tours this summer.
The partnership follows PSGâs layered running programme (combining the We Run Paris 10K, international run clubs, a digital PSG Run Club on Strava, Mo Farah as ambassador and a Nike partnership) as clubs increasingly use fitness platforms to build recurring fan touchpoints outside of matchdays.
YouTube stages FIFA Creator Cup in Central Park as part of push for 2030/2034 World Cup broadcast rights đź
YouTube hosted the first-ever FIFA Creator Cup at Wollman Rink in Central Park on 12 July, an exhibition match captained by iShowSpeed and streamed on FIFAâs official YouTube channel with Dove Men+Care and Layâs as partners, featuring creators with 270 million combined subscribers.
The event sits inside YouTubeâs broader pitch for 2030/2034 US broadcast rights alongside Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Apple - with iShowSpeedâs simulcast of Portugalâs opening World Cup match drawing 9.2 million viewers, reportedly outperforming Foxâs broadcast audience for the same game.
MLB signs Indian cricket star Suryakumar Yadav as ambassador in latest attempt to crack the Indian market đ
MLB has signed Suryakumar Yadav as a league ambassador, alongside a broadcast rights renewal with JioStar to air select regular season games, the All-Star Game, and the World Series in India, with activation beginning at the MLB All-Star Game in Philadelphia.
The approach marks a strategic shift from over a decade of previous attempts, rather than converting Indian cricketers into baseball players, MLB is borrowing cricketâs biggest current star to introduce baseball to Indian audiences on its own terms.
Netflix signs short-form video licensing deals with Variety, CondĂ© Nast, Hearst and others from August đ±
Netflix has signed video-licensing deals with a group of publishers including Variety, BuzzFeed Studios, Condé Nast, Hearst, and Tastemade to carry short-form lifestyle and culture content from 3 August, with clips ranging from two to twenty-plus minutes.
The move reverses Netflixâs long-standing strategy of walking away from licensed content to fund originals, and follows The Rest Is Football - which Netflix paid Goalhanger around ÂŁ14 million to bring to the platform for the World Cup - demonstrating the commercial case for publisher and creator content on the platform.
Wimbledon extends BBC deal to 2033 and launches AI-powered fan experience with IBM đŸ
Wimbledon has extended its free-to-air broadcast deal with the BBC to 2033, with the BBC citing ânew technology, fresh storytelling, new voices and innovative ways to connect with fansâ as driving forces behind the partnership.
Four days after the announcement, Wimbledon and IBM revealed AI-powered âKey Moments,â a live âMatch Chatâ watsonx chatbot, and a revamped âLikelihood to Winâ feature - building on a 2025 season that delivered 16% digital engagement growth and 39% growth in registered myWimbledon accounts.
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