Australian Sportstech News

Campaignware has introduced Campaign Booster, a brand new feature of their platform which rewrites the rulebook on social media sharing and takes digital campaigns to new levels. Put simply, it gamifies the campaign experience, giving fans additional entries to a competition - and therefore a higher chance of winning - while offering brands extra tangible benefits, rather than just one call to action.

On 3 March 2023, the Prime Ministers of India and Australia celebrated new trade ties at a cricket test match in Ahmedabad. What made the day special was the stadium. The Narendra Modi Stadium is the world’s largest, with a capacity of 138,000. And it was designed by an Australian company. Australia’s Populous is a multi-award-winning design company that specialises in sports stadiums, arenas and entertainment venues. Its 3,000-plus projects include the iconic Wembley Stadium in London and Sydney’s International Convention and Exhibition Centre (ICC). Sustainability is an integral feature of Populous design. The company’s Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle in the US is the first arena in the world to receive a zero-carbon certification from the International Living Future Institute.

Sport:80 has announced that it will be providing Coles Little Athletics Australia (LAA) with a solution for the seamless management of the Little Athletics community. Sport:80 will provide LAA and several of its Member Associations with a new sports management platform that will revolutionise the organisation’s operations and elevate member experience for their community. The collaboration marks a significant moment as LAA become our first Australian client.

Performance tech company Catapult has released a comprehensive report that provides crucial insights into the physical demands faced by teams and players at the highest level of competition. The report titled 'Performance Reference Values in Elite Women's Football' provides insights from the FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 and highlights player loads such as average distance covered by teams and positions, high-speed running and sprint efforts, positional breakdowns and maximal intensity intervals. 

Evolt, the advanced bio-electrical impedance technology that provides accurate body composition assessments and recommendations in fitness and preventive health settings, has been named as a finalist in two categories of the AUSactive National Awards. Operating in 43 countries, Evolt has conducted over 6 million body scans. It is a finalist in the Innovator of the Year and Best Equipment Supplier categories.

WeGuide and Garmin Health, a leading provider of digital health solutions leveraging the data and insights of the Garmin product ecosystem, are launching a grant open to medical and wellbeing researchers and digital health startups focused on innovation. The focus of the grant is to enable researchers needing patient engagement and data collection to conduct their research trial and collect wearable data relating to their specific area of research.

KangaTech and Charlotte FC have announced the integration of KangaTech's cutting-edge KT360 system into Charlotte FC’s training facility. This state-of-the-art technology will complement Charlotte FC’s approach to player health, performance and injury prevention. Charlotte FC’s Head of Performance Science, Mathew Pell, said, “KangaTech provides us with a fully integrated prescription and monitoring platform. It is intuitive by design and flexible for all our dynamic environments within Major League Soccer, enabling our practitioners to make informed decisions."

News Corp has told shareholders that there is “third-party interest in a potential transaction involving the Foxtel Group” in its quarterly financial statement. News Corp owns 65% of the company, with the remainder held by Telstra. Foxtel Group encompasses the traditional pay TV arm, plus sports streaming service Kayo Sports, streaming service Binge, and the recently-launched Hubbl. Total streaming subscribers, including Kayo Sports, BINGE and Foxtel Now, are up 5%, hitting 3.305 million, and representing around 69% of all subs. Broken down further, Kayo Sports is up 14%, with 1.606 million subscribers (1.550 million paid).

Hapana, a Sydney-founded fitness studio software platform that manages member accounts at more than 900 clubs globally, has raised $AUD 17 million in a funding round led by OIF Ventures and Bailador that will go towards increasing its international footprint and launching its next-generation offering. The SaaS company includes the likes of BFT, KX Pilates, STRONG Pilates, Gold's Gym, Club Pilates, F45, FS8, Vaura and Air Locker Training among its customers, and processed more than $500 million in payments in the last financial year. Founded in 2014, Hapana's story began in Australia but now the technology is used in 17 countries with the company employing more than 80 staff.

Sports Marketing Australia has partnered with OptimoGov to help local government & destination partners with venue management & event operations. The OptimoGov platform enables Councils to automate and streamline the booking process for seasonal & one off facility bookings & to book council services across a number of departments, allowing greater asset utilisation and a significant cost saving. 

Komo Technologies will be powering digital activations at next week's Fanatics Fan Fest in New York City. The event will be quite possibly one of the biggest sports fandom events of all time with the line up of talent including Tom Brady, Kevin Durant, Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. Komo will create new ways for Fanatics and their league, team, and brand partners to connect and engage with the fans and amplify the fandom even more

Platinum Asset Management and GAIN LINE Analytics have announced Penrith Panthers NRL team as the winner of Australasia’s (Australia and New Zealand) Best Sporting Team (ABST) 2023. The Panthers have won 3 NRL premierships in a row  and is widely credited with having one of the outstanding talent development and retention programs in the country, which is reflected in their outcomes. ABST evolved from Platinum and GAIN LINE working together and brings an analytical approach to understanding how relationships within teams (‘cohesion’) impact outcomes. The analysis covers 21 competitions, including 10 women’s leagues, and unisex esports, including over 8,400 individual matches.

AUSactive have announced the National Fitness Industry Awards finalist across 3 categories (Industry Innovation, Most Innovative Supplier and Best Technology Integration).Supplier category finalists include Australian fitness technology industry leaders including Evolt360, Coach Welly and Hapana. The Awards winners will be announced on 11th October.

Australian golfer Karrie Webb, Olympic basketballer Matthew Dellavedova, Australian cricket star Mitchell Starc and Athletic Ventures have invested in electric golf buggy maker MGI, co-investing alongside mid-market private equity firm Anacacia Capital.

The San Diego Seals are leaving no stone unturned ahead of the 2024-25 National Lacrosse League (NLL) season. Performance Director, Tyler Voas, and his team will use Australian sports-technology platform Lumin Sports to track and consolidate athletic data, medical monitoring, and strength & conditioning programming. The Seals become the second NLL team to embed Lumin Sports in their program, but the first to use Lumin Strength as it’s ‘go-to’ strength and conditioning platform.

Queensland's Department of Tourism and Sport has launched Sports Venues Connect, a dedicated platform showcasing the finest sporting venues in Queensland. This innovative and detailed resource will support the Sports Marketing Australia & Sports Marketing International team in attracting domestic and international high-performance camps and events to the Councils and Destinations in Queensland we partner with leading into Brisbane 2032.

Stan Sport launched a 19-day Olympics activation powered by Komo's Live Trivia card, where thousands of subscribers compete live daily, testing their sports knowledge for a chance to win epic prizes. Komo Technologies is a Perth-based company developing digital fan and marketing activation solutions across various industries including sports, entertainment and retail.

Australian compression wear brand 2XU teamed up with LA-based District Vision to launch a limited-edition collection inspired by the world’s toughest foot race, the Badwater 135 ultramarathon.The Badwater 135 is widely recognized as the world’s most challenging foot race. 2XU and District Vision set out to create gear capable of withstanding these extreme conditions to support ultrarunner and 2XU athlete Harvey Lewis to cross the finish line for a 13th time. The collection features nine new pieces from 2XU, including tops, bottoms, and accessories, paired with District Vision’s ultra-lightweight sunglasses.

As our Olympians and Paralympians take on the world in Paris, the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) will be home to a team of analysts working around the clock to give our athletes an extra edge against their competitors. The AIS Paris Performance Analysis Hub will see collaboration across sports, disciplines and organisations in the high performance system to ensure our athletes perform at their best and to fast-track development of world-class practitioners. There will be 20 performance analysts, nine data analysts/engineers and five Paralympics Australia staff working in the Hub across the Games with practitioners coming from national sporting organisations, the AIS and the national institute network.

A highly regarded scientist and tech innovator from The University of Western Australia has won a prestigious international award for her achievements in bridging the gap between biomechanics research and practice in sport. Professor Jacqueline Alderson, Director of Technology at the UWA Tech & Policy Lab, has been honoured with the Geoffrey Dyson Award, the highest honour of the International Society of Biomechanics in Sport (ISBS). Professor Alderson has been a pioneer in applied machine learning for health and sport applications and in envisioning blue-sky research and development programs, such as for digital human twins.

Catapult Sports has launched the new Catapult Athlete mobile app for athletes that includes the ability for the data collected during a training session to upload directly to OpenField Cloud. This is especially useful when training or playing away from team facilities and staff as it allows a more comprehensive data set for longitudinal reports on athletes regardless of where they are in the world. Athletes will see summary data for both activities they have uploaded via the app and activities that were completed with a team.

Paralympics Australia has announced Deloitte as its official partner for its digital transformation program. Deloitte’s support focuses largely on the implementation of SportsCore, a sports CRM solution developed by Deloitte to provide best practice capability across stakeholder, supporter and fan management, and integration and process automation.

INTIX has been selected as the exclusive ticketing provider for all Football Victoria run events, and the preferred ticketing provider for events occurring at the Home Of The Matildas venue. The partnership aims to unlock greater value from audience, reduce costs, streamline operations and increase communication fans & sponsors.

SportWest and ActiveXchange have extended their partnership to see the award-winning ActiveXchange for Sport platform remain in use across a number of State Sport Associations in Western Australia until at least 30 June 2027. As SportWest’s data partner for community sport participation and engagement, ActiveXchange delivers deep insights to help shape industry planning and prioritisation throughout metropolitan, regional and remote Western Australia.

In a move designed to revolutionize club fundraising, USA Fencing has partnered with iSponsor, a dynamic platform that turns everyday shopping into significant fundraising opportunities. This collaboration is designed to enhance the financial sustainability of fencing clubs by allowing them to focus more on developing the sport and less on funding concerns.

Ticketek Australia has announced the introduction of Apple Pay on the Ticketek.com.au platform. In confirming the development, Ticketek Australia becomes the first major ticketing company in the country to offer Apple Pay’s one-tap payment option to customers.

Flowstate and competition management platform Liveheats have launched a strategic partnership with the goal of bringing automated video capture to the world of live events, introducing new data points to the Flowstate AI technology and enhancing the competitor experience throughout the action sports industry. Under the partnership, event organizers would be able to utilise the Flowstate platform for AI-driven video capture, as well as automation in tagging and sorting of video clips according to the relevant round, heat, athlete, or score - driven by Liveheats’ event data. 

Gridiron Australia (GA), the governing body for Gridiron (American Football) and now Flag Football in Australia, recently transitioned to the Assemble Sports platform, positioning the sport for an exciting phase of growth. For the first time, the sport has united the Gridiron community under a national, cohesive platform that caters to both tackle and flag football formats.

LIGR Live has announced the continuation of its partnership with the Australia Football League (AFL). LIGR Live is the official graphics provider of the Coates Talent League Boys / Girls, Smithy's VFL and rebel VFLW competitions, transforming streaming and fan experience across 600 games in 2024 with cutting-edge broadcast technology. 

New concept designs have been released for a proposed AFL venue in Hobart, which is set to become the world’s largest timber-roofed stadium. The 23,000-seat Mac Point Multipurpose Stadium is being designed by Cox Architecture. The design has been informed by modelling cricket ball trajectory data to ensure the stadium is capable of hosting top-level cricket as well as AFL games.

Special Olympics Australia and Playbk Sports have announced the upcoming release of a new eLearning course, “Delivering Physical Education (PE) for Students with Intellectual Disability and Autism”. This online innovative course is available now on the Inclusive Sport Academy, Special Olympics Australia’s Learning Management System. Targeted at PE and classroom teachers in both mainstream and special schools, this course aims to enhance the sport and physical education experiences for students with disabilities and autism.

Brisbane Bullets have become Teamworks first NBL Elite Partner in the APAC region. With Hub, AMS and Influencer included in this package, the entire club will benefit from the Teamworks 'elite' partnership package. This will help streamline operations and administrative tasks, facilitate seamless monitoring and tracking of performance data to facilitate the personalisation of performance programmes, and, their marketing and wider commercial team will leverage Influencer to drive brand growth while maximising the new high performance centre and its capabilities for the club and fanbase. 

Chiliz, the sports and entertainment blockchain leader, is excited to announce a new integration with PUML Better Health, the gamified health, wellness, and sports platform. This collaboration aims to bring Move to Earn and Fan Health to the Chiliz community. PUML enables users to connect their wearable devices and claim their steps each day, rewarding members with PUML, its in-app game coin. This game coin can be redeemed monthly into the native token $PUMLx which can be exchanged for CHZ and Fan Tokens.

Veritone has announced a content licensing agreement with Tennis Australia, the governing body of tennis in Australia and host of the Australian Open. The agreement enables Veritone to license archive match footage from the Australian Open to content buyers in North America. Veritone’s customer base is in advertising, documentary, editorial, arts and entertainment who will now be able to curate, source and license tennis media through the Veritone platform.

F45 Training has become the first health and fitness operator to make its functional/HIIT group workouts available on Strava, the digital community with 125 million members. The integration between F45 Training’s LionHeart app and the Strava app allows members to automatically upload class type, average heart beats per minute, calories and location and can track their progress against others and themselves.

RCKT Co, a leader in sports marketing, content production, talent management, and social media, and Greenroom Digital, a specialist sports digital marketing agency, have announced a new strategic partnership focused on the Australian market. The partnership will leverage RCKT Co’s deep industry expertise in sports marketing, creative and production alongside Greenroom Digital’s cutting-edge digital, tech and data activation capabilities.

Linius Technologies has announce that the deployment of its sports solution, Whizzard, is now live with its customer Lone Star Conference (LSC). LSC, Linius’ second customer in the US college sports market, signed a 3-year agreement in April 2024 covering football and basketball. LSC will use Whizzard to curate highlights and for automated highlights of all games. 

Dribl from Australia and Koach Hub from Singapore are combining their strengths to bring the best in football administration, league management, player data, and fan engagement. The partnership officially kicked off at the Laos Football Federation's Youth League which is under the FIFA talent development scheme.

Garmin Health, a leading provider of digital health solutions that leverage the data and insights of the Garmin (NYSE: GRMN) product ecosystem, today announced the 7 finalists for the 2024 Garmin Health Awards. The annual event celebrates the world’s most innovative solutions that successfully combine the power of Garmin wearable technology within health and wellness programs to create long-term benefits. This year’s finalists will present their solution in person at the 2024 Garmin Health Summit, which is set for September 24-25 in Prague. The finalists include two Australian companies - G2go in the Human Performance category and Metluma in the Women's Health category.

The Wollemi Capital Group Syndicate (WCGS), and the National Basketball League (NBL), have formed a consortium to acquire a majority interest in the WNBL following the completion of the 2024/25 season. Basketball Australia will maintain a minority interest in the League. Under the new ownership structure, the consortium will take control of the league, with the NBL to operate the WNBL, from April 2, 2025.