Six Australian sport startups you need to know about for the Rio Olympics – StartupSmart
With the Rio 2016 Olympics having just started, we thought we’d look at the top six Australian sport-related startups of the past few years.
Sport is a huge part of Australian culture, so it’s no surprise to find plenty of Aussies hard at work, making sports and all things related more innovative and convenient for 2016.
Sprnt: Crowdfunding for sport
Sport clubs and eendeavors are often extremely expensive, and whilst the classic Aussie BBQ fundraiser is always a winner, with crowdfunding these days, it makes sense to have a service like Sprnt.
Originally known as “Sportaroo” back in 2013, Sprnt is now a well supported and modern crowdfunding site for sports. As such platforms go, Sprnt is up there; with a snazzy website, all or nothing funding and “Supporter Packs” – designed merchandise, experience or sponsorship to thank supporters.
Thus far, Sprnt has successfully funded various world championship teams and individuals from bobsleighing to football, making them to go-to fundraising platform for sports.
Sporple: Connecting the world of sport
Sporple is a sports networking site, allowing athletes, agents and clubs to connect within one global recruitment platform.
A sportsperson or club can easily sign up and make a profile on Sporple, which are immediately searchable on Google. Open positions listings and game schedules are available for athletes to search through. On the other side, agents and clubs can search according to age, nationality, visa, height, weight and career timeline, making it quick and easy to filter through and find the right person for the team.
Boasting over 12,000 users, Sporple is truly a professional hub for the world of sports.
iSportGenius: The most comprehensive source of sport data in the world
iSportGenius is big data meets the big wide world of sports. With a trimmed down and efficient UI, iSportGenius provides every bit of analytical data a sports fanatic or punter could ever wish for.
iSportGenius doesn’t just provide the bare-bones basics one might expect from such a data hub, but also nuanced and complex information such as weather conditions and relations between things like time of scoring and likelihood of winning the game based off of previous performance.
The Melbourne-based startup currently provides this wealth of data for AFL, NRL, Rugby, EPL, NBA and NFL.
CatapultSports: Wearable sensor for professional sports analytics
CatapultSport is another big data startup for sports, but more specifically, for performance tracking and analytics of athletes using state-of-the-art, precision engineered mobile tracking systems.
Originally borne out of an Australian Institute of Sports project using wearable sensors, Catapult is now the world leader in athlete analytics. Using scientifically validated metrics, coaches and trainers can closely monitor every piece of data one could ever think they’d need to fine tune athlete performance.
With indoor, outdoor and openfield equipment designed for sports ranging from American football to rowing and ice hockey, CatapultSport successfully merges sport science and analytics across all fields of sport.
ForeverNetwork: Next generation sports media and entertainment
ForeverNetwork is the newest startup on this list, having been founded in 2015 by a team of three passionate sports fans who with little budget managed to engage millions per week in the area of basketball news.
Now, having attained venture capital funding, ForeverNetwork aims to provide quality content including video, social, long form articles and illustrative artworks. At present, they run the BasketballForever site and Posterizes magazine, and provide high quality marketing, advertising and merchandise content through the ForeverNetwork studio.
With 117 million impressions per month and some of the highest engagement ratios on Facebook analytics, for such a young startup, they’ve done exceedingly well in a short amount of time and have made quite the impression on sports media.
RefLIVE: Smartphone and watch app for soccer refereeing
Gone are pencils and paper on the football field with RefLive, which introduces a simple and intuitive smartphone app for keeping track of everything a referee needs in soccer games.
After working with referees and club administrators, the RefLive team put together an extremely comprehensive app which covers all bases from the basic scoring and team tracking, to fouls and yellow/red cards. Post-match reports then detail everything recorded to correct errors and update paper records. RefLIVE even has a smartwatch version, making it the most convenient of tools for a referee on the field.
This article was originally published on IdeasHoist.
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