No matter how strong you may be at something, there are always new things to learn and different ways to improve. That’s the idea behind the Australian Sports Tech Network’s (ASTN) inaugural trade mission to the United States.
The trip, which started Friday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and goes through March 10, features a delegation of 16 Australian companies within the sports tech industry. They will be heading to Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles to meet with various companies including, but not limited to, the Golden State Warriors, San Francisco 49ers, Nike, Red Bull, Stanford University, the U.S. Olympic Committee, the 76ers Innovation Lab and Courtside Ventures.
According to Craig Hill, the Executive Director of ASTN, the companies are a small sample of the roughly 500 Aussie sports tech companies/startups that they’re connected to.
“Australia’s got a proud history of sports performance,” Hill said.
For ASTN, the goal of the trade mission is to breach the connections, partnerships and relationships that the U.S. sports tech market has to offer. “A trade mission to the U.S. has been on the horizon for quite a while,” Hill said. “I think what we realized is that the North American market is the biggest in the world.”
The companies include:
- Fusion Sport – Athlete management systems
- Altitude Training Systems – Simulated altitude training chambers & equipment
- POD Active – Ankle & knee brace technologies (partnered with Donjoy)
- Champion Data – In-game sports data analytics & media services solution
- SportPro ex – Low-cost sports broadcast, engagement and analytics platform
- SwimPro – Swimming video analytics solution
- Brooklyn Dynamics – Sports data analytics for sports scouting
- Axsys Performance – Athlete tracking technology
- 776BC – Smart performance garment
- PSCL Global – International Sports analytics conferences series & sports data championships
- Sporple – Athlete-centric profiling solution & networking platform
- Chemneera – International sports technology consultant / expert
- Australian Sports Technologies Network – National representative body of the sector
- The Australian Sports Tech Company – Dedicated sports tech seed investor
With this mission, Hill says that ASTN will be specifically focusing on the sports performance tech space rather than sports commercial tech space. “I think we realized that there’s a few companies like Catapult (Sports), Fusion (Sport) and SportsTec (now Hudl) that have broken down the doors a bit for us,” Hill said.
For those Aussie companies, and many others, the goal will be seeking trade outcomes and scaling out their own sports tech. Along with this, they’ll be looking for deeper marketing insights on the structure of the U.S. market as well as insights from some of its key decision makers. For example, when meeting with a professional sports team like the Warriors, the hope will be to understand some of their technology needs, priorities and problems.
“I think more than anything, being a long way from the rest of the world, it’s getting out of our own day-to-day thing here,” Hill said. “(It’s) embedding ourselves in an elite environment and really upping the ante as to getting these guys to really think about how they can approach the U.S. market expansion or entry.”
Hill is optimistic that this U.S. trade mission can become an annual thing. Next year the trade mission hopes to expand from 16 to 20-25 companies.
“I think that the quality of the program we’ve put together will grow over time,” he said.
