This section of SportTechie, “Sports Tech Wire”, contains original press releases issued by various companies and industry organizations. The releases are reviewed by the SportTechie editorial staff to ensure relevancy to the sports technology industry. For information and access, send your name and email address to info@SportTechie.com
DashTag, a Dutch startup that makes sport data accessible for all amateur football players, raised a €250k seed investment. A private investor and a successful Leapfunder campaign made it happen.
“I’m really excited, it gives us the possibility to develop our product and build our community ahead of the upcoming digitalization of sport”, says CEO and founder Epco Berger. “Sport engagement at an amateur level will rapidly change over the coming years, where technology will connect the sport stats and relevant info of each individual player at every level”. The numbers are big: globally, there are 88 million football players between the age of 13 and 24. A huge opportunity. “And with DashTag we want to play a leading role”.
Sophisticated wearable sensor
DashTag has a clear focus on team sports, starting with teenage football players. A youth optimized mobile platform offers each user performance stats such as their high intensity sprints, total distance covered, number of ball contacts and shot power. These stats are generated by a sophisticated wearable sensor – already developed by DashTag during the first months of 2016. The resulting benefits are an increased engagement and higher sport participation within the age group.
“During their first online visit, users spent an average of more than 8 minutes on our platform instead of getting bored after 30 seconds. This was stunning”
Beta-testing
“The results of many pilots and conversations held with our beta test group turned out very convincing”, says Dirk van den Berg, CMO and co-founder. ”Together with more than 200 players of different ages and gender, we tested our product and our awesome user interface. During their first online visit, users spent an average of more than 8 minutes on our platform instead of getting bored after 30 seconds. This was stunning. We’ve established a conversion rate of over 80% and we still had interactions 6 weeks later. We’ve exchanged 7.000 messages, where 1.500 would have been enough for the test.”
To further boost adoption among amateurs, DashTag are in talks with several professional football clubs in Europe as both potential customers and partners. These professional clubs typically think of adopting DashTag in their own youth academy as well as facilitating adoption within the local amateur clubs they collaborate with. Professional clubs benefit by boosting their social responsibility in the community, improving talent recognition and talent development.
You’ll find more about DashTag and their story at getdashtag.com