The latest Apple Watch is expected to add a slew of health and movement-tracking features as the tech giant prepares its next move in an ongoing fitness play.

The seventh iteration of Apple’s signature wearable will reportedly allow users to track:

• Blood pressure
• Wrist temperature
• Upgrades to its sleep tracking and irregular heartbeat monitoring features.
• The watch already tracks heart rate, cardio fitness, walking speed, distance,  symmetry, and other movement metrics.

Certain features will be available immediately, while others will roll out as software upgrades next year. 

Apple CEO Tim Cook said in February that he believes the company’s greatest legacy will be in health and wellness, adding “The future of health is on your wrist.”

The Apple Watch integrates with Apple Fitness+, a $9.99 per month subscription fitness class service allowing users to see their biometrics on screen as they work out. Peloton, perhaps thinking along the same lines, is working on a fitness tracking wearable.

Tech giants and startups are crowding into the health and fitness wearables space. Facebook is working on a wearable with fitness tracking features. Google, which shares a wearable technology platform with Samsung, acquired Fitbit in January for $2.1 billion. 

This week, WHOOP announced a $200 million Series F and acquired weight-lift tracking technology company PUSH.

JD Sports has been on an acquisition frenzy, but the U.K.’s antitrust regulator is throwing up a roadblock — the company may be required to sell Footasylum after all.

Britain’s biggest sportswear retailer acquired Footasylum in April 2019 for $124 million, but the acquisition was quickly flagged, which has led to a series of appeals and investigations: 

• July 2019: The Competition and Markets Authority launched an inquiry into the deal, which ended in the CMA ordering JD Sports to sell Footasylum.
• June 2020: JD Sports appealed the order.
• November 2020: The Competition Appeal Tribunal found that the original inquiry may have not looked closely enough at pandemic shopping habits, so the deal would need to be investigated further. 
• On Thursday, the CMA said the company may still need to sell its rival despite the appeal. 

The CMA again cited market competition problems if the companies stayed together, including a CMA survey reportedly showing that many Footasylum consumers are also JD Sports consumers.

JD Sports’ executive chairman Peter Cowgill said the company will “continue to make our case strongly to the CMA before it releases its final report” next month.

The company bolstered its portfolio by acquiring Shoe Palace for $325 million in December 2020 and DTLR Villa for $495 million in March. It also purchased Manchester-based clothing retailer Oi Polloi in May and a 60% stake in sportswear seller Marketing Investment Group in March. 

As of June, JD Sports had already generated roughly $7.3 billion in revenue. The Office for National Statistics says online retails sales increased to 27.9% in July.

Nautilus Inc. announced on Thursday that it has agreed to acquire VAY, a developer of motion technology and software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

The acquisition will allow the at-home fitness company to scale its JRNY digital platform and improve its personalized one-on-one workout experiences. 

Nautilus, which launched JRNY in 2019, acquired Schwinn (2001) and Bowflex (2002) as it looks to establish its footprint the $10.73 billion at-home fitness market: 

• In April, Peloton completed its acquisition of Precor, a commercial fitness equipment company, for $420 million in cash. 
• In July, iFIT, the parent company of NordicTrack, acquired women’s health and fitness platform Sweat for a reported $300 million. 
• WHOOP, a fitness wearable company, announced on Thursday its acquisition of PUSH, a technology company focused on velocity-based training.

Nautilus is reaping the benefits of a surge in at-home fitness fueled by the pandemic. 

The company generated $184.6 million in revenue for its fiscal first quarter, a 61.7% increase compared to the same period a year prior.

The Pac-12 Conference is carving out new ways in which college athletes can profit off of their name, image, and likeness by allowing them to license video footage and highlights.

The first-of-its-kind suite of opportunities comes through the conference’s media licensing partner, Veritone.

The Pac-12, which made $530 million in the 2019 fiscal year, is the first Power Five conference to open up this opportunity.

• Pac-12 owns all footage of games it hosts, no matter which network broadcasts it.
• Athletes can sign directly with sponsors, which would then license footage from the Pac-12 Network, or the sponsor can make a deal with the network and pass on a clearance fee to the athlete.

The move comes on the heels of the conference hiring former MGM Resorts president of sports and entertainment George Kliavkoff as its new commissioner. 

Kliavkoff, who is known for his media rights and entertainment experience, will negotiate new media deals to start when the current 12-year, $3 billion pact with ESPN expires after the 2023-2024 season.

Later this month, the Pac-12, Big Ten, ACC, and SEC are expected to meet to discuss expanding the College Football Playoff. ESPN holds the rights to that tournament on a $5.6 billion deal that runs from 2014-2025.