Slinger Bag, which has renamed itself as Slinger, has entered into an agreement to acquire 100 percent of the issued and outstanding shares of Gameface.AI – in exchange for 6,666,667 shares of Slinger’s common stock and up to another $3.5 million in common stock in contingent (earnout) considerations. The deal is worth about $24 million. Thanks to Gameface’s AI video platform, Slinger’s forthcoming app will be able to use smartphone cameras to analyze groundstrokes and biomechanics, and recognize events match play. According to Slinger’s CEO, Mike Ballardie, the acquisition “is the next step in our evolution towards building a disruptive, world-class connected sports company.” Gameface is being brought “in-house as a portfolio company” to “build new software and technology products for tennis and other sports.” Gameface’s CEO, Jalal Shaik, adds that “the time is now for the democratization of high-performance coaching […], and there is also a real opportunity with AI to create new athlete and fan experiences through data points that previously were never captured.” According to Shaik, AI has been Gameface’s focus since 2015.

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