Elite wearables company STATSports is seeking to enter the competitive amateur athlete market with its new APEX Athlete Series wearable. The bluetooth-enabled GPS device relies on the same core technology as the professional product but scales down the complexity to make the offering more accessible to individual athletes rather than teams with coaches, trainers, and sport scientists.
STATSports touts the fact that some of soccer’s biggest names all use its devices—Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, and 2018 FIFA World Cup winner Paul Pogba. The client list of its elite APEX Team Series version includes the Brazil Football Federation, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, and Juventus. U.S Soccer recently agreed to a five-year agreement with the Irish company to make STATSports wearables available to all pro and academy players.
The Apex Athlete Series’ real-time data syncing allows coaches or parents to track daily activity from the sidelines. Athletes have a choice of 14 metrics to track, including speed and distance, and can compare their results across leagues and leaderboards. Users have assurance of data privacy unless they opt in to a sharing mode. Making their data accessible could aid recruitment by NCAA programs and the U.S. Soccer Federation.
“The launch of STATSports APEX Athlete Series is a game changer for elite level amateur field sports players who want to optimize their performance,” said STATSports co-founder and chief commercial officer Sean O’Connor in a news release. “Using the same technology relied upon to drive peak performance by the best athletes and teams in the world, the APEX Athlete device is a powerful new tool for players with an eye to compete at their highest level.
“Never before has an individual player had the ability to monitor and measure their performance with tangible datapoints, developing important individual benchmarks along the way. This data can be used to compare performance benchmarks by position with national standards, as well as those of top NCAA players.
“Not only does the data serve to improve performance, but it can also identify movement imbalances, and give an athlete coming back from injury the critical information needed to return to play with confidence. With the track record of success from working with the world’s most iconic sports teams, we’re thrilled to bring our APEX technology to the competitive levels throughout the youth and collegiate ecosystems in the US.”
SportTechie Takeaway
A prevailing theme in sports technology is its democratization to sub-elite athletes. Within the GPS category, Catapult released its PLAYR product to everyday athletes back in June (after previously acquiring PlayerTek). FieldWiz has catered to this tier all along. STATSports’ entry into the market needs to be taken seriously given the company’s pedigree with top clubs around the world and its position as Catapult’s chief competitor in the elite market.