LA’s Newest Gambling Event — Live Sperm Racing, April 25th at the Palladium

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/what-to-expect-from-worlds-first-competitive-sperm-race-c668fcdjf

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Sperm Racing, a startup founded by a team of young millionaires, announced representatives from two competing schools -- the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles -- will provide the microscopic swimmers for the inaugural Sperm Race.

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A startup called Sperm Racing, run by four teenage entrepreneurs from the US, said it had raised $1.5 million to stage the event at the Hollywood Palladium on April 25.

Eric Zhu, the company’s 17-year-old co-founder, said the inaugural event would pit samples taken from two healthy young university students against each other on a racetrack 8in long and modelled on the female reproductive system.

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The Sperm Racing team: Shane Fan, Eric Zhu, Nick Small and Garrett Niconienko

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Zhu said the goal was to have fun while raising awareness about male fertility. “We want to turn health into competition,” Zhu said. “Sperm is surprising as a biomarker. The healthier you are, the faster sperm moves.”

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Two students from rival universities, the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles, were found to have “matching biomarkers” and selected to take part.

Once the samples are taken they will be placed in a pipette and injected into a “microfluid device” in the centre of the palladium, a famed concert venue. A live video feed, magnified 40 times to display the 0.05mm spermatozoa, will track the samples’ progress.

Sperm typically swim at about 5mm per minute, meaning each race will take at least 40 minutes. Whichever crosses the finishing line first, as “verified by advanced imaging”, will be declared the winner.

The event will be run over three races in front of a crowd of 4,000 spectators, and feature play-by-play commentary, instant replays and leaderboards, according to Zhu.

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The screen could look like this


the crowd could look like the one that turned out for a Jay-Z performance

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“Male fertility is declining … a lot,” Zhu wrote. “It’s happening quietly, steadily, and nobody’s really talking about it. And sperm motility — how fast your sperm moves — turns out to be a massive factor in fertility.”

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