London Sport – where technology and sport collide

Working in a career that you love is most certainly a privilege and it’s even more exciting when you learn about new businesses who’s premise is to encourage people to enjoy sport, and to make peoples lives richer and more fulfilling through actively participating in sport. 

On Thursday 5^th October, I was lucky enough to attend the launch of the Sport Tech Hub Incubator Programme at the House of Sport in central London. With a vision to make London the most active capital in the world, the Sports Tech Hub brings together 18 SportTech, FinTech and HealthTech start-up businesses who’s focus ranges from driving mass participation in sporting events and at-home fitness, to social engagement and fully immersive experiences across a whole range of activity. 

Following an extensive selection process, the 18 businesses involved represent a snapshot of the potential future for technology-supported physical activity – all will benefit from guidance received through the first six-month Sport Tech incubation programme and working with the partners involved such as Sponge Marketing,Crowdcube, London and Partners, and more.

Everyday sports tech 

The bond between sports and technology has been getting ever closer for many years – just look at the advances in wearable technology, there’s no shortage of ideas coming to market. In January Wareable outlined the 50 wearable tech game-changers for 2017 – predicting an essential guide for what’s going to be available to consumers in the year ahead. 

As wearable technology becomes more integrated into everything we do, more and more ideas will be born to monitor many aspects of our life – from wristwatches that track steps taken during our day to monitoring our sleep patterns at night. 

A marketing-cycling-techie junkie

Being the marketing-cycling-techie junkie that I am, my everyday go-to apps and technology devices are Garmin, Garmin Connect, Strava, My Fitnesss Pal and Relive.cc. For those not in the sporting world here’s a quick debrief…

• My Garmin device records and captures my mileage, shows ascent/descent, tracks my heart rate, cadence, speed and more, and is synced to my Garmin Connect account which presents all my activity in one simple dashboard
• Strava is a social network (kind of like Facebook for sports people) and is widely known as ‘the’ social network for cyclists – I use this to share my ride with my Strava pals for them to comment and give me ‘kudos’
• My Fitness Pal enables me to track and monitor calories burnt during exercise so I can plan my diet more effectively
• Relive.cc does what it says on the tin – it enables me to relive my rides and geo-locates photos taken en route – it’s a fabulously fun platform

These apps and technology platforms have the ability to sync and talk seamlessly to each other – they’re also intuitive and really easy to use – but what’s more interesting is they are all bring together sports and technology, and are based and built around sport, living a healthier lifestyle and supporting our general well being.

I wonder what’s next on the horizon? Perhaps one of the 18 incubator start-ups will launch the next ‘must have app’ to support making London the most active capital in the world.