Why Is The Quantified Athlete Market Ripe For Disruption?
WE’VE PRIORITIZED THE QUANTIFIED ATHLETE TREND FOR SEVERAL IMPORTANT REASONS:
The market is incredibly saturated. The number of technology companies and products working to measure athlete performance is staggering. Despite the supply side push, business models for using the data from devices are still evolving and there will be some clear winners and losers.
There are clear areas of specialization and synergies. These technology companies do very different things to help monitor, measure, and predict athlete performance. These areas of specialization are very complementary. Companies that can identify the right ecosystem of partners will achieve scale by providing more complete solutions.
Timing is right for large technology companies to drive consolidation. After an initial wave of consolidation in 2013 and a secondary wave in 2015, the market is ready for its next big push (chart below). We believe athlete management platforms lay the groundwork for what’s coming next. Large technology companies like IBM, Intel, SAP, and Microsoft are keen to see which athlete management platform companies can gain share and scale across leagues, teams, and federations.
There were 29 acquisitions of Quantified Athlete companies between 2013 and 2016 for an estimated $5.4 billion.
HOW'D WE COME UP WITH THIS NUMBER?
There were 18 deals that accounted for roughly $3.4 billion in total M&A. These public figures show the average deal size in this category is roughly $186 million. There were 11 other private transactions, which we estimate account for another $2.0B. Together, all 29 Quantified Athlete transactions represented $5.4 billion. With this level of capital investment and interest in this space, we see a consolidation coming across point solutions so there is a more complete window into the athlete's body and performance.
Marc Lemann, one of our advisors at the Sports Innovation Lab, recently led an investment in Strava, a cycling company working on quantified athlete solutions.
"Go4it’s investment in Strava bolsters the company’s portfolio of sports technology assets, which also includes Keemotion, TAPPP, Greenfly and goFlow." - SportsPro
To learn more about what investors are looking for in this space, we caught up with Marc at CES.