Sportstech Innovation in the Industry From a Startup Perspective By Carsten Couchouron & René Engelhardt Hansen This section presents the insights gained from our pursuit to explore Sportstech innovation in the industry from a startup perspective. As innovation in the industry is a broad area, we chose to focus on startups as they can be perceived to be the main drivers of Sportstech innovation. We start off by exploring current typologies used in the global industry to develop an operational and industry-aligned framework to categorize Sportstech. Subsequently, the framework is utilized to identify, categorize, and map current Danish startups as well as comparing the findings to international trends. Finally, we combine the insights gained to identify gaps and potential opportunities for future Sportstech innovation in Denmark.
Sportstech innovation typologies review
nature, some take a deeper dive into a specific sector (e.g. football), or take the perspective of a particular end-user (e.g. stadiums, athletes).
We set out to research if there were any existing Sportstech innovation typologies that could be used for the football industry, and that could help us gain a better understanding of the sector, the current areas of innovation, the scoping of our project, and the use of a common terminology. Our search process was based on desktop research as well as on our industry knowledge and international network. The latter materialized through conversations with industry peers and attendance of sports and football tech conferences.
The general comparison of the various Sportstech classifications found through our desk research is represented in Appendix B. From the mapping and comparison (see Appendix B), we can identify the following overall categories: • • • • • • •
Our research revealed that various organizations have defined certain categories for the purpose of mapping out Sportstech companies operating in specific Sportstech eco-systems that they are working with. These categories form the basis of classification systems that were developed by consultancies, investment firms, Sportstech hubs, publishers, academic scholars etc. to suit their specific needs and perspectives.
Social & Fan engagement Facilities & Events Media & Sponsorship Performance, Training & Health Data & Analytics E-sports AR & VR
These general categories are useful for determining a general Sportstech categorization system which can be used for all sports, and therefore also for football. However, the categories identified above cannot be used as a definite categorization structure for two reasons.
While most of these approaches are of a general 29
