Is ‘Sperm Racing’ Really Coming to Las Vegas?

Posted on: May 9, 2025, 03:29h. 

Last updated on: May 9, 2025, 05:04h.

Corey Levitan Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

• A 17-year-old San Francisco resident seeks to stage Las Vegas’ first sperm race
• The sport involves samples from two competitors, magnified and projected onto screens, racing down a track toward a finish line
• Serious questions about its authenticity have been raised

The promoter of “sperm racing” claims he’s taking what he calls the new “sport” to Las Vegas. The activity sees semen from two male competitors collected, centrifuged to isolate viable sperm, then placed simultaneously on two 8-inch microfluidic tracks designed to mimic the female reproductive system.

Microscopes with high-resolution cameras project the race onto screens for a live audience. The first sample to cross its finish line wins.

Believe it or not, sperm racing is not a new concept. A 2005 German TV show called “Sperm Race” tried it first. But Eric Zhu, a 17-year-old San Francisco resident — along with his three tech-bro friends, aged 16 to 22 — are the first to try promoting it as a scalable live event.

Zhu even claims that sperm racing has a social message — raising awareness for declining male fertility rates worldwide.

Zhu and his startup, called Sperm Racing, raised $1.5 million, mostly from reproductive health companies, to stage the first race in L.A. on April 25. It was squarely aimed at the college market, pitting UCLA against its arch rival, USC.

But the impressive presentation, livestreamed to YouTube, seemed professional. It included live commentary, leaderboards, instant replays, and pre-race press conferences.

The YouTube video of the race has so far earned more almost 50K views, suggesting a sizeable potential audience. Indeed, Zhu claims a much larger show, with celebrity competitors, is in the works for the Las Vegas Strip.

At this point, however, everything about sperm racing’s Las Vegas debut seems  purely aspirational.

When asked who its celebrity competitors might be, for example, TMZ reported that Zhu merely “dropped the likes of” Shaquille O’Neal, Kendrick Lamar, Drake and Nick Cannon when asked his participants, without confirming interest from any of them.

It Hasn’t Gone Swimmingly

The first race was originally scheduled for the Hollywood Palladium, and $20 general admission tickets were sold. However, the venue decided to pull out due to the negative advance press the event received.

Several media outlets criticized the event for exploiting a sensitive health issue for entertainment and profit. El País accused it of celebrating “patriarchal masculinity.”

The race was held instead at Los Angeles Center Studios. Seating only 500, it is about an eighth the size of the Palladium.

During the downscaled event, USC student Tristan Mykel competed against UCLA student Asher Proeger in a best of three.

As the competitors looked on, a man dressed in a white lab coat, emerged holding syringes he loaded up and then placed on separate tracks.

When a clock counted down to zero, the guy in the lab coast pressed both plungers simultaneously. The screens showed spermatozoa racing through twists and turns until one team reached the finish line first.

Mykel, wjhose sperm won, claimed a $10,000 prize, while Proeger was sprayed with a cloudy white liquid for losing.

Seeds of Doubt

Austyn Jeffs of The Free Press made his way to the control room backstage, and discovered that the race wasn’t live at all. He reported that “prerecorded clips of the sperm race had been uploaded into the ‘live’ video stream.”

In addition, the clips were clearly labeled with the name of the winner of each round: Two were marked ‘Mykel Wins,’ a third ‘Proeger Wins.’

“The ‘live’ race hadn’t even begun, and Austyn knew the winner,” the Free Press wrote.

This is highly problematic because an unspecified dollar amount of wagers had already been taken by Polymarket, a U.S.-based cryptocurrency prediction market platform that allows users to bet on event outcomes.

Fake It ’til You Make It

When confronted by The Free Press, Zhu acknowledged that the race wasn’t live. It had occurred an hour earlier. Zhu also admitted that the order of the clips was rearranged. Though Tristan Mykel won the first two rounds, making him the winner, they filmed a third round “to make it more interesting.”

In other words, the syringe plunges and everything else about the live presentation was as phony as professional wrestling.

However, Zhu later claimed to USC’s newspaper, the Annenberg Press, that the race was real and that each of the four people present for it signed contracts preventing betting or sharing results to ensure fairness.

However, the accusations went further. In a follow-up story from The Free Press, Steven Palter, a fertility doctor and the medical director of Gold Coast IVF in New York, claimed the race itself was fake.

“Sperm swim erratically,” he explained. “They go in circles. They wander. Their tails spin when they swim. Nothing about their movement and shape is the way sperm are. This has to be computer-generated.”

To date, no lawsuits have been filed by any losing wagerers on the first race. But the scandal may have permanently doomed Zhu’s dreams of a Las Vegas debut — no doubt at the egg-shaped Sphere.