💰️Micropayment Solutions, Masters Tournament Technology, and WNBA's 3D Tracking

Hey

Welcome to the eleventh edition of The Sports Stack! As The Masters tees off today, we're exploring a few major technological trends reshaping sports media and performance: innovative monetisation models and advanced sports performance technology. From micropayments that could change how we consume sports content to cutting-edge data tracking that's transforming elite golf and women's basketball, this edition examines how technology is creating new opportunities for creators, fans, and athletes alike.

We'll cover:

• Product Spotlight - Pay-Per-View Evolved: Inside RecastPay's Frictionless Media Wallet Strategy.

• Green Jacket, Digital Innovations: How The Masters Is Advancing Golf's Tech Landscape.

• First of Its Kind: WNBA's Landmark Data Partnership Sets New Standard for Women's Sports. P.S. Check out our Caitlin Clark stats giveaway. 👀

• Quick Hits: This Week’s Stories & Updates.

💡 Product Spotlight - Pay-Per-View Evolved: Inside RecastPay's Frictionless Media Wallet Strategy.

This week’s product spotlight focuses on RecastPay, a new product launched by Recast. According to Recast, it’s a ‘frictionless, digital wallet enabling media owners to sell any media direct-to-consumer at any price, without subscriptions’. 

RecastPay aims to allow anyone to sell virtually any digital item, such as videos, podcasts, articles, AI tools, and beyond, directly to consumers at flexible price points ranging from £0.01 to £100 per transaction. 

I’ll dig into the technology, the use cases and why it could be a powerful tool for small to medium-sized creators and sports organisations. 

How does it work? 

• At its core, RecastPay functions as a universal media wallet that integrates seamlessly with existing platforms.

• RecastPay provides a comprehensive SDK for developers seeking deep integration with their existing platforms. This allows for complete user experience customisation while utilising RecastPay's transaction infrastructure behind the scenes.

• For media owners seeking quicker implementation, RecastPay offers ready-to-use, customisable widgets that can be deployed in minutes. These are especially suitable for live and on-demand video streaming.

• Importantly, it works with video content, audio content, written content and other experiences, allowing media owners to price content at different prices, rather than having to take a blanket price for content.  

• Media owners and creators have the ability to create revenue-sharing arrangements with partners, affiliates and contributors to help increase reach and revenues.

You can see the technology in action on their demo site. 

Note - it’s not clear yet what the costs to creators are, but we can assume that with no up-front or ongoing costs, there would be a revenue share based on the transaction value. I have asked Recast to confirm. 

Market Validation from Industry Giants 

The concept of micropayments for sports content isn’t entirely new, but it's receiving validation from the biggest players in tech. As we discussed previously, Amazon has begun experimenting with pay-per-view transactions for UEFA Nations League and Ligue 1 football matches in the UK, charging £2.49 for individual games - even to non-Prime subscribers. 

This move by Amazon is an important market indicator. If the company that pioneered the subscription economy sees value in one-off payments, there's clearly demand for more flexible consumption models. Amazon has the technical infrastructure to handle these transactions within its ecosystem, but what about smaller rights holders or content creators?

That’s where I think RecastPay could fill a void and be a real success. By providing the payment infrastructure as a service, they’re essentially democratising the ability to offer micropayments for any type of content. A regional sports network, an independent sports documentary creator, or even a sports podcast network could implement RecastPay without building complex payment systems from scratch and generate new revenue streams.

What problem are they trying to solve? 

• Subscription fatigue is real. According to RecastPay’s data, a staggering 39% of consumers are likely to cancel a subscription within the next year. 

• The average sports fan today is faced with an impossible choice: subscribe to multiple services at £10-20 per month each to follow their favourite teams. 

• This problem is amplified by current economic pressures, with inflation and rising costs forcing consumers to scrutinise their recurring expenses. 

[Watch Out] It’s important that creators and media owners don’t get carried away with these micro-payment-based pricing models, as consumer fatigue may also extend beyond subscriptions to decision-making itself. Will fans truly want to decide whether each piece of content is worth £0.99 or £1.99, etc?

This "mental transaction cost" can be a significant barrier that RecastPay will need to help their customers overcome. Fans want good value and choice, but they also don’t want to be ‘taken for a ride’ and end up paying more per month to purchase individual content pieces - this will create a net negative for the media owner. 

Learning from History: Why RecastPay Could Succeed Where Others Failed

We've seen attempts at micropayments for sports content before. Perhaps the most notable recent example was Buzzer, which aimed to allow fans to pay small fees to watch the last quarter of an NBA game or the final innings of a baseball matchup. Despite raising significant venture capital, Buzzer ultimately didn't achieve widespread adoption.

The key difference between Buzzer and RecastPay lies in their business models and risk allocation. Buzzer had to take on significant risk in its deals with rights holders, essentially betting that enough fans would purchase content to cover their licensing costs. This meant Buzzer bore most of the downside if user adoption didn't meet expectations.

RecastPay, by contrast, operates as an infrastructure provider. They're not buying rights and reselling them; they're simply providing the payment technology that enables rights holders, media owners and creators to offer their own content however they choose. There's no inventory risk for RecastPay, and rights holders can experiment with different price points and content offerings without significant upfront investment.

The Future View: What This Could Mean for Sports Media Creators and Owners? 

As we look ahead, RecastPay and similar micropayment solutions could represent a significant shift in how sports content is monetised. While subscriptions won't disappear, as they're still the most efficient way to monetise fans, micropayments offer a way to capture the long tail of casual viewers who might otherwise be lost. 

There are still challenges to this model. As we know, consumer behavior is sticky, and there's always friction in introducing new payment models. In sports specifically, rights holders also face complex decisions about which content to offer through micropayments versus keeping it exclusive to subscribers, typically driven by their long-standing rights deals, which can be difficult to adjust.

However, with Amazon and others moving to experiment and launch pay-per-view models in sports streaming, the directional shift seems clear. In a fragmenting media landscape with hundreds of subscription options, consumers are demanding more flexibility. The successful sports entities of the future will likely offer a spectrum of monetisation options, from free ad-supported content to micropayments to premium subscriptions, each targeting different segments of their fanbase.

🌸 Green Jacket, Digital Innovations: How The Masters Is Advancing Golf's Tech Landscape.

Masters.com and The Masters app consistently rank among the leaders in digital products and sports apps, and it’s always exciting to discover what they have in store each year. I may be biased, but the advances we’re seeing across the golfing world now are great, and I believe they are creating a really additive viewing experience for existing fans and, importantly, new fans. 

• The Masters is expanding its use of Gen AI through enhanced AI-powered capabilities with IBM’s watsonx. IBM’s strong partnership with The Masters and Wimbledon gives it one of the coolest sports sponsorship portfolios.

• For the 2025 tournament, IBM has been fine-tuning its large language models (LLM) using many more sources. These sources include historical shot locations, insights from golf experts such as past Masters caddies, and various metrics from a database that spans nine years and over 180,000 shots.

• The Master’s Apple Vision Pro app has been updated to include enhanced 3D visuals and new features, such as Video on Demand, as well as the return of various live streaming options and immersive course views. 

• The Masters ‘Track’ feature has now been enhanced to include the driving range and practice area, allowing fans to view performance statistics from players' warm-ups, such as distance, spin rate, and more. 

• HDR Live Video will be available for the first time for all Masters live streams on Masters.com and The Masters app, allowing fans to experience the incredible colours like never before.

Intrigued golf analysts and fantasy players are enjoying the new insights, with many attempting to determine which players are struggling & trying to find something based on the volume of practice!

🏀 First of Its Kind: WNBA's Landmark Data Partnership Sets New Standard for Women's Sports.

Genius Sports has just announced another landmark partnership with the WNBA, who will utilise Genius Sport’s Second Spectrum optical tracking cameras, becoming the first women’s professional sports league in the U.S. to gain access to 3D player and ball data.

It’s vital for women’s sports to have the same access to data and analytics as men’s sports for competitiveness to thrive and for injury prevention. Normally, due to a lack of investment, we’ve seen a gulf in access to data and technology in women’s sport - for example, it was not until 2021 that women’s golf had data collection for LPGA events, enabling professional women golfers to access automated and detailed information stats. What most people consider standard took a long time to become the norm, but it has since allowed the women’s professional game to improve. 

This multi-year, league-wide agreement with Second Spectrum marks the latest milestone in the rapid growth of the WNBA and will allow all athletes to have better access to their analytics and improve the overall standard across the league. As WBNA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert put it, “Deploying state-of-the-art optical tracking technology through Genius Sports will deliver rich data to our teams that they can leverage to enhance player performance while informing in-game strategy and enable a new wave of insights and media elements for fans.”

More details on the details of the partnership can he found here.

Other important women’s sport investment/partnership news: 

https://www.mancity.com/club/partners/hytro - Hytro is Manchester City Women’s Official Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Partner, supporting the team with world-leading wearable technology designed to enhance athletic performance and accelerate recovery.

https://www.sportspro.com/news/togethxr-capital-raise-revenue-womens-sports-merchandise-april-2025/ Per SportsPro, Athlete-backed women’s sports media and commerce company Togethxr has received fresh investment, boasting it has achieved profitability and doubled its valuation since its last fundraise.

🗞️ Quick Hits: This Week’s Stories & Updates.

💵 Arctos Insights Flash Piece: Impact of the April 2 Tariffs on North American Sports - This is an incredibly interesting read about the impact of tariffs, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. In summary, Arctos Insights believes that major US sports leagues are well-insulated and have low-risk exposure to current tariffs. 

🏃 Grand Slam Track officially launched. I didn’t catch it live because I was away; however, I caught up on demand. My thoughts: 

• It’s not easy to launch a brand-new sports league, so congrats to the whole team. I love the Challenger v Racer format, and it’s great to see some innovation in athletics.

• YouTube highlights were great with some new and innovative camera angles; however, I noticed in the comments that die-hard athletics and race watchers were somewhat unhappy with the races being edited down instead of full length.

• The stadium looked quite empty for some of the races; I'm not sure if that was the expectation, and broadcast reach was the focus. It will be interesting to see the difference when they go to Miami. 

📺️ https://www.businessinsider.com/sports-livestreaming-startup-playback-scores-22-million-investment-mlb-deal-2025-3 Sports livestreaming startup Playback has raised $22 million from investors, including Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six and Khosla Ventures. They’re looking to become the Twitch for sports. Founded in 2023, Playback addresses the copyright challenges that sports creators face by securing official agreements with the NBA's League Pass and now MLB.tv, enabling creators to legally stream games with commentary.

🏈 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/american-football/articles/cx275lww9qxo - The NFL announced last week that the Kansas City Chiefs and Green Bay Packers have been awarded marketing rights in the United Kingdom and Ireland as American football continues its expansion outside the USA. Teams can now market and connect with audiences in these markets directly. Importantly, has it given us a bit of a clue as to who the likely away team will be in Ireland in September: Steelers vs Packers? 👀 

🏎️ According to an interview at SportPros' most recent motorsport forum, F1 is working hard to bring a betting partner and product to the market. The craziest stat from this article is that F1 makes up only 0.4% of the global betting handle. Considering the size of the sport and the fact that it provides opportunities for multiple markets across a race week, it’s quite strange. Is this a case of an area that’s been neglected, or is the demand simply low? Potentially, we’re seeing a higher barrier to entry for sports bettors due to the complexities and nuances of the sport’s strategies, which is something F1 will need to address when they bring a new product to market.

Thanks for reading,
Mark