Business showcase : Catapult Sports

Describe the company – the elevator pitch …

Catapult Sports is the world leader in elite sports performance analytics, with our technology serving over 1,500 of the world’s elite sports teams across 30 sports in 60 countries worldwide. Our clients include Chelsea, Bayern Munich and Brazil Football teams, the NBA, NFL and Australian Cricket Team.

How are you different?

Catapult is rooted in science. Our mission is to democratise the insights and analytics used by the coaching staff of the world’s greatest teams, and help improve the performance of every athlete, at any level, practising any team sport.

Why will the company/product do well?

From a market leading position in elite sports, Catapult has big ambitions to both dominate the elite performance and technology stack as well as build our sub-elite and consumer offering – a market estimated to be ten to twenty times larger than the elite space.

Catapult’s initial sub-elite and consumer offering, PlayerTek, tracks your movement and measures your physical performance during training and games with distance covered, top speed, sprint distance and number of sprints, enabling you to train smarter and raise your game. We’re seeing an increasing number of amateur footballers taking their game to the next level by tracking their performance with the PlayerTek system.

Where are you based?

Catapult is a global company, with offices all around the world including Australia, America, China and the UK.

When was the company launched?

After wearable sensors were used to great success by the Australian teams in advance of the 2004 Athens games, Catapult’s founders Shaun Holthouse and Igor Van De Griendt decided to help more athletes from more sports improve their performance using this ground-breaking technology. Catapult was born in late 2006, and over the past ten years has become the global leader in athlete analytics.

What have been your biggest wins to date?

In May this year, we won the Cutting Edge Sport award at the BT Sport Industry Awards for our project with England and Wales Cricket Board.

In 2015 it was listed as the 12th most innovative company globally by Fast Company magazine, and number 1 in both big data and fitness.

What type of people (market segment) are you trying to attract to your product?

With Catapult, we target elite teams, sports scientists and high performance coaches across 30 sports worldwide.

Playertek, our recently launched consumer product, is designed for anybody who wants to improve their football game. There is also a team web based platform which is being used by both amateur and semi-professional teams.

Tell us about your team?

Catapult has over 200 staff based in 11 countries worldwide. Catapult is a founder driven business based out of Australia, incorporating an authentic brand, and where culture is everyone’s responsibility. One of my favourite questions when hiring someone is to ask myself: “If I share a long haul journey with that new colleague, will I enjoy it? If not, is it worth hiring them?”

What are your long term plans for your product/company?

At Catapult, we are pushing forward with our elite ambitions. Building on our existing market leading position to further dominate the performance technology stack for elite sport. But what is most exciting to me, personally, is the opportunity to help aspirational players and teams worldwide. We have started this journey with our Playertek offering for amateur footballers, but the plans and development already in motion will represent a massive step change in this space.

What are your favourite tech gadgets?

Currently the BLOCKS by ROLI, a completely disruptive way to play music for amateurs. Nothing else very exciting really those days that I can think of as a life enhancer.

What tech gadgets do you wish you could use to help you?

I dream of a world without cables. Over the air charging and power for laptops, phones. But it will likely remain a dream. I would also really like to see a wearable that would truly help me monitor my stress level and take action. I am hopeful this will come to life but think we are likely 5 to 7 years away from having a compelling and accurate product proposition.

Anything else you’d like to add/we should have asked?

Nothing really. We at Catapult are on a simple mission. Help any team sport player or teams enhance their game. Nothing less. Nothing more.

How do people get in touch with you?

You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter (Catapult / PlayerTek) and Instagram (Catapult / Playertek) and visit our websites – www.catapultsports.com and www.playertek.com

Prepared and edited by @Edina Zejnilovic, Journalism student at DCU

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking