Slinger Serves a Successful First Year
S
linger Bag is the ultimate tool for all tennis players and has disrupted the sport over the past year with its portable, affordable, and versatile tennis ball launcher. Slinger has executed on its aggressive growth strategies to become a leading connected sports company in tennis and eventually in new sports verticals.
Deals & sponsorships Slinger has a mission to make ball sports more accessible and fun for players of all levels. To propel this mission forward, Slinger has on boarded numerous professional players and top coaches over the past year to create a world-class ambassador team that includes worldrenowned players and coaches such as the Bryan Brothers, Nick Bollettieri, Tommy Haas, Dustin Brown, Patrick Mouratoglou, Eugenie Bouchard, and Darren Cahill. These ambassadors love using the Slinger Bag themselves for coaching or play. Slinger has also partnered with numerous brands throughout the year including Mouratoglou Tennis Academy, Dunlop, Peter Burwash International and UTSA, and has sponsored key events such as the US Open and Miami Open. To get the Slinger Bag in the hands of players across the globe, Slinger has established over 60 distributor agreements throughout this year, spanning across six continents. These areas include Brazil, China, India, Europe, Malaysia, South Africa and more—estimating over $250 million in distribution deals. Recent acquisitions In Slinger’s ongoing effort to become a leading connected sports company, Slinger has acquired a SaaS technology platform—Foundation Tennis. This platform is a pioneer in tennis software applications covering tennis club and facility administration
and encompassing highly functional user and CRM experiences. Foundation Tennis has a reach of over 17,000 US tennis facilities, One million registered current users and over 30 million transactions and court booking completed on its platform. It is also the only tennis company to be an official platform partner for the payment service, Square. The acquisition of Foundation Tennis gives Slinger the ability to successfully meet the specific needs of tennis players, member clubs and tennis facilities and begin providing new services to tennis facilities around the world. Slinger has also recently acquired an award-winning Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology provider for sports, GAMEFACE.AI. This leading AI company has developed the AI capabilities for Slinger’s upcoming app, which will be launching later this year. GAMEFACE.AI provides instant analysis of groundstrokes and biomechanics as well as event recognition from match play situations, all captured through a phone’s camera. GAMEFACE.AI’s technology, combined with pro player tips, drills and a community space for Slinger
Bag users will make up Slinger’s new app coming soon. To round out the year, Slinger most recently acquired PlaySight Interactive as its third acquisition of 2021. PlaySight is a pioneer and leader across sports video technology, data capture, high performance analytics and automated video production. Coupled with the recent acquisitions of Foundation Tennis and GAMEFACE.AI, this most recent acquisition of PlaySight Interactive will immediately expand Slinger’s footprint in the global tennis market and significantly enhance its AI capabilities. Growth by the numbers To close out a successful first full year of operations, Slinger generated gross revenues of $11.2 million on sales of over 20,000 Slinger Bag tennis ball launchers and accessories. This strong first year signifies the impact Slinger has had across the industry, with monthly sales topping $1 million in the U.S. in April 2021. To continue its growth, Slinger recently raised $11M in an oversubscribed funding round as they continue to rapidly move forward as an immersive sports company.
NYTennisMag.com • November/December 2021 • New York Tennis Magazine
21
