IBM puts Irish firm Orreco at centre of its latest US primetime TV advert

It’s not every day that an Irish company gets to be the focus of a TV advert on US primetime TV – but then IBM Watson is no ordinary business partner.

Described as the world’s first super-computer, IBM Watson is helping elite athletes and sports stars to optimize their performance with the kind of computing power that sports coaches could previously only dream of.

IBM Watson’s sports programme is being powered by the expert knowledge of Orreco, the Irish sports performance company that counts golfers Padraig Harrington and Graeme McDowell as investors.

Orreco’s team of sports scientists work with the world’s top coaches and teams, using valuable data including GPS and performance stats that it collects and analyses from blood to improve and athlete performances and even help to prevent injuries.

That actionable data and expertise is now being fed into IBM Watson, helping coaches and pro-athletes to make key decisions based on specific knowledge and personalised factors. One day that expertise will be available to all.

The exciting work has been hailed in a series of TV ads made by IBM and running from this weekend in which the work of the Galway-based firm is given an enormous compliment in a big IBM marketing push.

Commenting on the TV ads, which will be also be seen during the live TV coverage of the semi-finals and final of the US Open, IBM says: “Orreco is working with Watson to reimagine competitive training. Every factor counts when a coach is training a team or athlete. And with Orreco and Watson, coaches can analyze every bit of data to customize training regimens for each athlete. Scientific studies, performance records, sleep schedules, weather, diet and even unstructured data like handwritten notes, can all be analyzed to ensure athletes have the best program to Optimise their performance.”

The ads can be viewed below:

Orreco and IBM Health:

Orreco and IBM Swim:

Orreco CEO and co-founder Dr. Brian Moore said: “The ad campaign reflects our long term ambition to make elite level analysis and support available to weekend and amateur athletes.

“Our team is growing and our consultancy team has been joined by high performance advisors including Dr. Andy Barr – recovery specialist who has worked with English Premier League side Manchester City, New York Knicks and New York City FC.

“We are also delighted to welcome to our team Dr. Ara Suppiah – personal physician to golfers Henrik Stenson, Open Champion and Olympic Silver Medalist, Graeme McDowell, Ian Poulter and Gary Woodland.

“We’ve started working with our first individual NBA player Wilson Chandler of the Denver Nuggets and have this month renewed major contracts with global sporting franchises.

“Our data science solutions are attracting interest from EPL teams whereby high performance staff are being inundated with volumes of data. We can help them wade through this and find signals in their data and help them optimise the training loads for their athletes.

“It’s not always about holding players or athletes back, sometime it’s helping ensuring they are training hard enough to become robust and tolerate the loads that are associated with professional sport. It’s a very fine line and cutting edge sports and data science can help you navigate that line”