• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, October 8, 2015

The Walt Disney Co. showcases 10 startups Wednesday afternoon in its second accelerator program. With the Techstars network behind the endeavor, entrepreneurs develop media and entertainment products with the possibility of some sort of collaboration with major companies. All from this year's program have tie-ins to Disney in the works, according to executives.

Disney's ESPN will use the search engine StatMuse, one of the 10 in the Accelerator Program, to gather statistics for basketball starting this season. In the next 18 months, the site will expand into football, baseball, soccer, and other markets like media.

Eli Dawson, cofounder and CEO of StatMuse, says the search engine for sports uses artificial intelligence to return stats when asked questions in a conversational language such as "what is the most stats LeBron James has ever scored in one game, on the road, in the playoffs, or against the Warriors."

Every search result is a piece of content and every "sports junkie" becomes a content creator, Dawson says. In fact, he describes the natural language search technology as being the foundation for a "full-blown sports media platform."

The platform is in beta, but fans visiting the site searched 500 times each in one month. In the first 48 hours after opening the platform up in beta, the demo video was viewed in more than 120 countries.

Dawson estimates 60 million people play fantasy sports in the U.S. Some make big bucks.

Assani Fisher, a 33-year-old former professional poker player, plays professional daily fantasy sports. He ranks among the elite where players buy into competitions and make cash based on the performance of the athletic lineups they pick. Fisher claims he turned $600 into $800,000 from February to September 2015 playing games including golf, baseball and football.

Some of the other companies on display during demo day for the Disney Accelerator product, where startups are paired with studio employees for a three-month immersive mentorship program, include Emotiv, Open Bionics, Im Person, Hyper, MakieLab, Littlestar, Pundit, Decisive, and FEM.