Builders & Platforms, Issue 008
What Got Built This Week · October 23, 2026
Cannondale is leaving Connecticut. Pon Holdings will close the Wilton headquarters by mid-2027, with 143 positions on the WARN notice and layoffs starting December 21 (Merry Christmas). The global HQ moves to the Netherlands (Escape Collective). This is a brand named after a Metro-North stop. It doesn’t get more Connecticut than that. I live up the road in Litchfield, where half the riders on our roads learned what a fat aluminum tube was because of this company.
Here’s the part that should worry every dealer. Pon’s outside reps will now carry several brands at once. Meanwhile, the Chinese factories that built frames for Western brands for decades are selling under their own names (Bloomberg), with veteran independent reps pitching shops on better margins and brands that show up for local events. Tariffs haven’t slowed it (PeopleForBikes). So the shop owner’s math in 2026: the legacy brand moved to another continent and handed you a shared rep, while the factory that used to build those bikes offers its own at half the price. The call is coming from inside the supply chain.
Cannondale’s best defense was always the story and the relationship, and it just packed up both.
Mainstream sports biz spent the week on FIFA’s U.S. World Cup rights tender (SBJ), Apollo’s $2.6 billion Yankees deal (The Athletic), and the NFL’s private equity joint venture (SBJ). Meanwhile, a running shoe shipped with sensors in it, ski racing got easier to find, ESPN started recruiting fans who can’t tie their shoes yet, and a celebrity supplement brand quietly went dark.
That’s the beat. Welcome to Issue 008.
The Cap Table
1. The Shoe Is the New Wrist ·
Wearables · Running
Avelo launched the Supertrainer One this week at $250: a sensor in each midsole, no charging, and an AI coach that reads your stride after every run (Avelo). I’ve been running in it for several weeks through the Frontrunner program that backed the Kickstarter; one of the best shoes out of the box for a 5K (Disclosure: my firm, CTH Advisors, is working with Avelo to raise capital, so weigh my enthusiasm accordingly.)
I’ve seen this movie before. I advised Milestone Sports, whose $25 footpod Zwift bought in 2018 and turned into the RunPod (Zwift Insider). And whatever happened to Stryd, the company that promised running its own version of the cycling power meter? Still here, still clipping onto laces, still asking runners to care about watts (RunMorph). Cyclists treat watts like scripture. Most runners treat pace like scripture and everything else like the Book of Leviticus. Rutgers just published a battery-free smart shoe that powers itself from your footsteps (ConsumerAffairs). The wrist is crowded. The foot is open ground.
The rub: Nike tried this in 2006 with Nike+iPod, and then the phone ate it. A footpod rides along on any shoe. A smart shoe has to win the shoe decision first, and runners don’t give that one up easily (see Signal Check).
2. Fame Is A Seed Round ·
Athlete Brands · Consumer
Kate Hudson’s supplement brand InBloom appears to be done: website dark, Instagram silent since last July, less than three years after landing in 450 Whole Foods stores (Beauty Independent). Not a dunk on Kate. She co-founded Fabletics, which passed $1 billion in revenue last year (Modern Retail), and she stars in Running Point, Netflix’s very good basketball comedy (I’m a fan), as a team president, proving she’s more than the family name (Netflix).
But look at the full record. Happy x Nature closed during the pandemic (CNBC). InBloom is dark. King St. Vodka is TBD. One huge hit, two misses, one pending. That’s an angel investor’s track record, and it’s the right way to look at every athlete brand, from the quarterback’s energy drink to the gold medalist’s recovery gummy. A famous name buys attention at launch. It doesn’t buy repeat customers.
The tell: the wins have an operator in the room. Kobe put about $6 million into BodyArmor, and his estate reportedly took home about $400 million when Coca-Cola bought it for $5.6 billion (CNBC). But the guy getting it into every bodega cooler was Mike Repole, who had already sold Vitaminwater to Coke. The athletes were the marketing plan, not the operating plan. Fame gets you the first meeting. The operators decide if there’s a second. That’s Isla Gordon’s whole arc, by the way. The name gets you the job. The operating gets you the ring.
3. Ski Fans Finally Find the Remote ·
Olympic Sports · Media Rights
Watching World Cup skiing in America used to be Where’s Waldo, if Waldo were a slalom run behind three logins and a geo-block. Remember when Outside had the domestic races (Outside)? Now NBC, U.S. Ski & Snowboard, and FIS have centralized it: every alpine race on Peacock, domestic events on YouTube too, and a free YouTube and FAST channel for everything else (SBJ). Outside went from live home to highlight reel. Fans went from three services to one.
Sophie Goldschmidt said the quiet part out loud: “For years, fans had to work harder than they should have to watch our athletes compete.” I had the same argument at USA Cycling when we moved to FloSports: give it away for reach, or charge to pay for production? Ski’s answer is both. Paywall the marquee races, and use the free channels to grow the fan base.
The GOAT, Mikaela Shiffrin, opens her season in the Sölden giant slalom Saturday at 4 a.m. ET(NBC Sports). Set your alarm to watch the greatest skier, male or female, to ever crash gates. Your couch is way better than an Epic Pass, and probably costs less too.
4. ESPN Goes Junior Varsity ·
Media · Creators
ESPN launched ESPN JV, a YouTube-only kids channel with an animated series built by WSC Sports’ studio arm (ESPN Press Room). Six days later came Star Wars Funday Football, an animated Super Bowl LXI on Disney+ with C-3PO in the booth (Disney+). Somewhere a seven-year-old is about to learn the nickel defense from R2-D2. (These aren’t the coverage schemes you’re looking for.) It’s on Valentine’s Day, so Disney has picked a side in the dinner-reservation-versus-droid debate.
Called it (twice): In December I wrote that sports media now means starting with YouTube.
In March, I called ESPN’s Playback move a full-stack commitment to creators. ESPN JV is both.
The rub: a kid on YouTube is YouTube’s audience first. The bet is that the seven-year-old pays for ESPN at 22. That’s a 15-year payback, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s the company that owns Mickey, Marvel, and now C-3PO.
5. The AI Intern Gets A Lanyard ·
AI · Teams
An interesting read in SBJ this week introduced three AI agents now working in sports: Roxy answers Cavs fan questions, Abicus handles the Hawks’ 12,000 waivers a year, and Mo does marketing for the Texans, Predators, and Storm (SBJ). FanIQ calls Mo “the best junior marketing resource you’ve ever had,” which is a little rough on actual junior marketers. The best quote is the Hawks’ Kim Rometo: waivers were a pain, “but it was also not enough of a pain to warrant investment.” That’s the whole thesis. The money isn’t in the robot announcer. It’s in the boring work nobody would hire a person to fix.
Some history, since “first” gets thrown around a lot. (Disclosure: I’m an advisor and at Eon Media.) Eon came out of the Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech accelerator with U.S. Ski & Snowboard as a pilot (Comcast), used AI to show sponsors where their logos actually got seen at the Beijing 2022 qualifiers (SVG), and signed USA Cycling in 2021 (USA Cycling).
Same lesson then as now: agents with cute names are fine, but agents that cut a cost line are better.
Fumbles & Vaporware
Wander Lust. 777 Partners co-founder Josh Wander pleaded guilty to fraud, admitting he double-pledged assets and pledged some that didn’t exist, and agreed to forfeit at least $500 million (SDNY). Some of it bankrolled his soccer clubs (AP). Multi-club ownership was sold as the smart-money playbook. This one was a shell game with jerseys.
Hero to Footnote. GoPro, the camera behind every mountain bike crash video of the 2010s, is merging into an AI optics company, and its shareholders will end up with about 10% (SEC filing). Great product, no recurring relationship with its customers. Wearable founders, take note.
Signal Check
55.4% of runners train and race in the same shoe brand (SGB).
That’s the hill every smart shoe has to climb. Running shoes are like ski boots. Feet are different, and not every brand works for everyone. Once you find the shoe that doesn’t give you black toenails, you don’t give it up for better data. (Ask any skier about the boot fitter who fixed their shin bang. They talk about him like family.) Brooks is up, Hoka and Nike are down, and Hoka’s parent just posted its first sales miss in at least five years (Yahoo Finance), so loyalty is real but fragile. Runners switch for fit and feel, not for the app. Data is the reason to stay, not the reason to switch.
Who’s Building
Josh Furlow (RunX Seattle). Bias alert: Josh is one of the best builders out there. We worked together at Competitor Group on the Rock ‘n’ Roll series, and Rock ‘n’ Roll Seattle gave me the single greatest mile I’ve run in a marathon, the wear blue Mile honoring fallen service members. Josh brought wear blue to that race in 2010, and he just joined its board (wear blue). Now he’s launching RunX Seattle, a downtown half on June 13, 2027, with the Seattle Sports Commission (FOX 13). His quote, “Every neighborhood has its own frequency,” is so Seattle I expected a KEXP DJ to cut in. Frasier would approve. He’s listening.
Mike Dorfman (Pro Padel League). The PPL moved its season finale to Las Vegas during F1 race week and signed MGM Resorts as title sponsor (SBJ). Smart drafting. A young league can’t build a Vegas crowd on its own, so it parks next to one and lets the foot traffic from the Bellagio fountains wander in with drinks in hand (PR Newswire via ABC27). What happens in Vegas only matters if some of it comes home with you.
Paul Rabil (Premier Lacrosse League). Best media-rights lesson of the week: the PLL’s first deal ran on NBC Sports Gold, a standalone subscription that gave the league its own fan data, and that data helped land ESPN, which now owns a piece of the league (Yahoo Sports). He also runs youth lacrosse as a break-even business. Every NGB should take note: know your fans before you sell them.
Overheard
“Once you put it onto the charger, you typically forget about it, and then you don’t wear it.”
Rutgers researcher Simiao Niu, on why his team built a self-powered smart shoe (ConsumerAffairs).
Felt that one. I canceled Oura because the battery kept dying before the day did. I constantly leave my SRAM shifter batteries on the charger, or one dies mid-ride. Nothing humbles you on a climb like a dead shifter battery. The real problem in wearables isn’t the sensor. It’s the routine. Every device asks you to remember one more thing, and the moment it slips, it joins the Fitbit in the junk drawer.
That’s why the shoe matters. You already put it on every day. The best wearable is the one you forget you’re wearing. The worst is the one you forget to charge.
Build Accordingly.
Bouker Pool · Managing Partner, Weck Enterprises · Reply to this email or DM me on LinkedIn.
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Full disclosure: I advise and invest across sports-tech, media, youth sports, endurance, and wearables. When B&P covers a company I’m involved with, I’ll do my best to note it in the item.