The last Sport for Business Round table event of 2016 took place at the Dublin Development offices of tickets.ie yesterday morning and delivered a series of contributions on the challenges and opportunities presented by the crossover between sport and technology in Ireland.
We will be diving deeper into a number of the ideas presented and initiatives sketched out in the early part of 2017 but for now here are a few of the take away points that emerged from a lively and vibrant conversation including representatives from Sport Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Athletics Ireland, Cognito Strategies, Astroparks, Ticket.ie and a number of start up ventures
1. Collaboration with sporting organisations is more important than cash from them in developing technology that can work best for specific issues.
2. We need to identify specific issues whether that be in performance, efficiency or marketing that technology can deliver as a real benefit.
3. Sports participation is down and the demographic challenges of getting more people into the idea of playing, especially in team sports is a major issue where communication technology can help.
4. Irish sport tends to be suspicious of technology companies and this can be down to issues of data security, the thought of somebody making money off their memberships or simply a lack of comfort in understanding what is being suggested.
5. There is a role for an innovation champion within sporting organisations at every level who will be tasked with staying ahead of developing technologies and providing insight on what might work best. This can best be achieved most likely in a voluntary capacity from somebody working in that sector.
6. There is a willingness on the part of sport to open its doors more towards collaborating with tech companies to create something that benefits both.
7. Ireland can and should be seen as an important and valuable centre for establishing credentials before monetising on a wider geographic scale. It can be the sporting Sandbox for sports tech development.
8. Time is the scarcest resource so proposals need to be precise and deliver real and understandable benefit over a defined time scale.
Sport for Business has already had offers of working together with technology companies from a number of corporate and sporting members and will be launching a pathway to how this can work best for a number of pilot schemes in 2017.
If you would like to be involved in this process make contact with us today and let’s see what is possible…
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