Clubforce Announces Strategic Partnership with Output Sports
Clubforce which provides an all-in-one sports club management platform, is partnering with Output Sports to further help customer clubs to improve on-field play and enhance player’s performance by providing them with a means to monitor and track their progress.
Clubforce, based in Galway, is the Irish leader in club automation, simplifying payments and providing a communications, promotions and fundraising platform for members, clubs and leagues. With recent funding the company has more than doubled in size to realise the goal of creating a new sports technology ecosystem and category, Sports Participation Technology.
Output Sports, a UCD spin-out company headquartered at NovaUCD, is a sports technology company which makes elite level performance tracking more simple and widely available than ever before.
Output Sports launched its first product, Output Capture, last February. The company’s technology uses wearable and phone camera sensing technology to track gym performance with lab-grade accuracy and integrates this data for enhanced training, injury risk stratification and talent ID. It is the most diversely capable performing testing tool on the market and has clients in more than 17 countries including in the GAA Championship, English Premier League, NBA, Six Nations Rugby and Major League Baseball.
Warren Healy, CEO, Clubforce said, “Our vision at Clubforce is joy, health and wellbeing through sport. Offering clubs and volunteers new technology to enhance their experience is at the core of who we are and what we do. Clubforce and Output Sports share this mission of bringing sport and its benefits to as many people as possible. We are really excited to see the added dimension and enjoyment this will bring to both our members and players.”
Darragh Whelan, co-Founder, Output Sports said, “At Output Sports, we are passionate about bringing elite level sports testing and tracking to a much wider audience than ever previously possible. Clubforce has a proven track record in working with GAA teams at all levels to efficiently manage all aspects of their club. As such, they are a natural partner for us as we bring the same performance technology used by Provincial and All Ireland winners to the wider GAA community.”
“We look forward to working with them to ensure that athletes at all levels of the GAA reach their training goals safely and efficiently.”
Output Sports, founded by Dr Darragh Whelan, Dr Martin O’Reilly, Julian Eberle and Professor Brian Caulfield, is a spin-out from the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science and the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics. It is based on scientific research funded by Science Foundation Ireland, the Irish Research Council and Enterprise Ireland.
Colm Ó Méalóid, Business Development Executive, responsible for the partnership at Clubforce said, “At Clubforce, we are always on the lookout for ways we can help clubs improve. Although we generally focus on off-the-field activities such as fundraising and membership management, partnering with Output Sports presented a great opportunity to assist clubs in improving their on-field performance.”
He added, “Their technology enables both coaches and players to measure strength, power, speed and movement which is sure to improve their performance on the field. This kind of monitoring is often overlooked. I am looking forward to welcoming Output Sports into the partnership ecosystem we are building at Clubforce.”
In February 2020 Output Sports secured a seed round of €1.3 million in led by the Atlantic Bridge University Fund, with Elkstone Partners, Enterprise Ireland, and angel investors, John Hearne (co-founder and former CEO of Curám Software) and Leinster Rugby players, Adam Byrne and Dan Leavy. The company is currently fundraising €3m in order to allow for scale.
The partnership strategically aligns both companies by combining the strength of Clubforce club automation capabilities with the Output Sports dedicated focus on player performance and wellbeing.
ENDS
6 October 2021
For further information contact Micéal Whelan, Communications and Media Relations Manager, UCD Research and Innovation, e: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie or Rachel Kavanagh, Chief Marketing Officer, Clubforce, e: rachel@clubforce.com.