Sports performance analytics company Kitman Labs has acquired Wigan-based athlete data management firm The Sports Office.
Kitman Labs said the combined entity represented the “largest, most capitalised company” in the sports performance technology sector with the “strongest data science and development capacity” in the industry.
The Sports Office was set up by former Great Britain rugby league captain Phil Clarke and his brother Andy, a former sports scientist for Liverpool and Manchester United.
Its athlete and performance management system is used by the Premier League, Rugby Football Union and National Basketball Association and enables teams to aggregate athlete medical notes, training data and videos from games.
Dublin-based Kitman Labs provides a performance analytics and medical data platform that is used by teams in the National Football League, Major League Soccer, Premiership Rugby and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
“The sports data digitisation wave led by The Sports Office established data management as a foundational layer of sports operations,” said Stephen Smith, founder and chief executive of Kitman Labs.
“Without their vision and their transformational approach to putting the pieces of the performance and medical data puzzle together, the analytics innovations we deliver to quantify the drivers of performance and health would not be possible.
“Together, we have the combined power to maximise the digital landscape of sports data and create the operating system for high performance.”
Andy Clarke, chief executive of The Sports Office, added: “We’ve watched many trends in the performance market over the years, and never have we seen a time when the needs of the industry have been so varied, complex, and so quickly outpacing traditional technology.
“There is a clear need for more investment, better products, better support, more flexibility, and more knowledge versus just information. Now we have the resources to leverage what we have each built to date, accelerate product innovation, and redefine the customer experience.”
Founded in 2012, Kitman Labs has raised US$18.5 million to date, most recently securing an additional US$5.1 million from a Series B funding round in November.
