Over the past few years the fusion of sports and technology has evolved and become commonplace amongst tech companies and sporting brands & associations alike. However, despite the growth, engineers, gamers and technology experts in Silicon Valley for example are not the first thing you associate with the sports industry.
However, with eSports predicted to be worth $1.65 billion by 2021, the introduction to all things digital within traditional sports shows no signs of slowing down.
Currently SportsTech can be divided into five trending sectors* allowing companies to specialise in an area of technology within sports.
- Quantified Athlete – tech organisations monitor, predict and measure an athlete’s training and performance.
- Smart Venues – acts as an extension of the fan experience automating the customers journey from ticket purchase to safely arriving home.
- Next-Generation Sponsorship – the injection of technology throughout the sponsorship process.
- Immersive Media – enables technology companies to develop digital sports content experiences that provide consumers with greater interaction and agency.
- eSports – videogame competitions constructed through the development and distribution of games, fan engagement and event management.
As a result, sporting enthusiasts GolfSupport.com analysed findings from SportsTechX and their report ‘European SportsTech Report 2018’ to investigate which areas of SportsTech are garnering the most interest from startups*.
Golf Support found that the most popular sector among SportsTech startups is Marketplaces & Discovery (17.9%), which comes as no surprise considering it is essentially the exploration of platforms through which you can find, book and buy clubs, venues, events, tickets and other sportsmen. The five next most popular sectors SportsTech startups are covering include:
News & Content(14.5%), Wearables & Equipment (12%), Activity Data & Analytics (9.6%) and finally eSports & Fantasy Sports and Betting both with 8.7%.
Interestingly, only two of the current trending sectors are featured within the top five; Quantified Athlete and unsurprisingly eSports.
However, the following SportsTech sectors were found to be the least popular for startup companies to specialise in:
Teams & Clubs (7.5%), Fan Engagement & Social Platforms (7%), Venues, Events & Leagues (5.7%), Preparation (5.1%) and finally Media Data & Analytics with a mere 3.2%.
Golf Support can also reveal that Multisport was discovered to be the most popular sport for startup SportsTech companies with a staggering 55.5%. The other five most influential sports for SportsTech companies to specialise in include:
Football (17.4%), Fitness & Workout (6.7%), Golf (4.5%), Racket Sports (2.5%) and finally Cycling with 2.4%.
The research also revealed that the United Kingdom was found to have had the most SportsTech startups across Europe with 29.7%, with London identified as the capital of European SportsTech; home to just over 16% of all startups.
*The trending sectors was pulled from Sports Innovation Lab’s report: Sports-tech market trend overview 2018
*The data was based on their database of more than 1,000 SportsTech companies.
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