Melbourne Conversations: Sports Tech of the Future. An event not to be missed.
Melbourne + Sports
Melbourne is undoubtedly the sports capital of Australia. It is where Australian rules football (or the AFL) all started. The AFL Grand Final is usually held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), and the MCG was also the main stadium for the 1956 Olympics and 2006 Commonwealth Games. Since 2007, the MCG has been the finishing point for the annual Melbourne Marathon, which is the biggest marathon in Australia in terms of finishers. The MCG also hosts the Boxing Day Test match. Let’s not forget there’s the Melbourne Cup, the race that stops the nation. Then there’s the annual Melbourne Track Classic that moved from Melbourne Olympic Park to Lakeside Stadium, and got renamed to Maurie Plant Meet. To top it off, quoting the Lord Mayor Nicolas Reece: “Melbourne is… …the only city in the world to host both a Formula 1 Grand Prix and a Tennis Grand Slam.”
"Melbourne is the sports capital of Australia and the only city in the world to host both a Formula 1 Grand Prix and a Tennis Grand Slam. We’re also home to almost half of the country’s sports tech companies.” - Lord Mayor, Nicholas Reece
Melbourne – Home of Sports Tech
Looking at sports tech companies, we have Catapult Sports, which was founded in Melbourne in 2006. The athlete-tracking technology was originally developed with the AIS to prepare athletes for the Sydney Olympics. The founders took that technology and further developed it for player tracking in AFL and Rugby. Building on the AFL use case, they expanded into soccer clubs in Europe, the NFL in the USA and subsequently the NBA. Today, they are the most used athlete-tracking and monitoring solutions in the world.
Even before Catapult Sports, there was Champion Data, which was also founded in Melbourne (in 1995) by Ted Hopkins (a former Carlton player) and had its roots in the AFL. Their core product was sports analytics. Now, besides covering data analytics and broadcasting stats for the AFL, they are in netball, rugby, golf, horse racing, football, lacrosse, etc.
Another sports tech company based in Melbourne is HitIQ. Founded in 2017, it first developed custom mouthguards for contact sports players. The mouthguards are embedded with sensors for measuring and monitoring impacts and help manage the risks of concussion. Since then, the team has developed a suite of solutions to holistically assess and manage concussion-related injuries.
There are lots more Melbournian companies in sports tech, and they range from early-stage startups to mature companies. Just to name some, there are Sports Performance Tracking, Ida Sports, Cape Bionics, 776BC, Data Driven Sports Analytics, Kanga Tech, Strength by Numbers, Zena Sport, Metric, and more. They all were birthed to fill a gap in sports. Being in Melbourne, where sports is such a big part of the city, meant they had that ‘fertile ground’ to formulate, test, and refine their solutions before they took it to the world.
What’s Ahead
As we head into an era in which digital technology has grown so rapidly in the last few years and has entwined itself into the different facets of society, what else can we expect in this space of sports and technology?
The City of Melbourne, in partnership with Fed Square, is presenting a Melbourne Conversations event called ‘Sports Tech of the Future‘ that will shed some light on this.
Held on 17th July (Wednesday) at Fed Square, ‘Sports Tech of the Future‘ will see experts discuss how innovative technologies like virtual reality are being used to enhance athletic performance, improve sports integrity and encourage more engagement with fans.
Australian academics and leaders from some of the country’s largest sporting institutions will form an expert panel at this FREE symposium. Hosted by award-winning radio personality and avid sports fan, Russel Howcroft, the panel will comprise:
- Dr Machar Reid – Head of Innovation at Tennis Australia and one of the game’s preeminent voices in sport and coaching sciences. Machar has a PhD in biomechanics and has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles.
- Jonathon Bernard – Creative and Innovation Director at the AFL who focuses on growing the game among new audiences who are unfamiliar with Australian rules football.
- Lisa Hasker OAM – CEO of Vicsport – the peak body for sport in Victoria – and a member of the Australian Sports Technology Network board of directors. In 2024, Lisa was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her services to sports administration.
- Prof Emma Sherry – Dean of the School of Management at RMIT University in the College of Business and Law and a global expert in sport for development and social impact.
So, if you are in Melbourne and into sports tech, this is an event you should not miss. Sign up for this FREE event here: link.
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