What role should sports technology play in women’s sports?
It’s a question that should be asked more often. And it should be answered not only from a data privacy perspective, but also from a strategy and investment perspective with a focus on untapped opportunities, innovation and impact. Because the untapped opportunities are many.
“The time is now to support investment in tech focused on women’s sports,” said Kiki Mills Johnston, a partner with Drive by DraftKings, a venture capital firm that invests in sports tech. “We have a pulse on how tech solutions can help individual female athletes, teams, leagues and operators serving women’s sports. We’re looking for opportunities. There are big problems that need to be solved.”
If you’re in the business of women’s sports, you’re effectively in the business of closing gaps with men’s sports. Or, in many cases, closing chasms. That is the overarching big problem. All kinds of well-known, entrenched chasms exist between men’s and women’s sports. In pay. In power. In sponsorship. In marketing. In merchandise. In media coverage. In the quality of facilities. In support staff. In fan engagement. In research. In respect. Investing more thought and more money in sports tech geared toward women’s sports can help narrow the gaps and narrow them quickly. Or, more specifically, the data collected can.
By tracking and recording biometric data, sports tech can set in motion a virtuous cycle. More information about, for example, an athlete’s heart rate, body temperature, biomechanics, hydration, hormones and exertion during competitions can improve performance, keep development on track, reduce injuries, prolong careers and attract fans. Simply put, sports tech can and should play an essential role in sustaining progress in women’s sports.
Yes, the virtuous cycle can play out in both men’s and women’s sports. But with fewer resources across the board in women’s sports, with all the gaps to close, sports tech can do more for women’s sports.
To create and sustain the virtuous cycle in women’s sports, there must be more investment in sports tech designed and developed with female athletes in mind. Specifically, the ways their bodies are different. If you consider the hormone fluctuations in women’s cycles and the greater prevalence of ACL injuries among female athletes, it’s easy to understand why.
“We need to think about where we need to rewrite the playbook and do something completely new, because men’s and women’s bodies are different,” said Jaime Waydo, chief technology officer at Whoop. “Tech has a very important role to play there. You have to start with getting data and understanding it and publishing research on it. Then you build it for the individual, then you globalize it and build it for the team.”
Puck Pieterse has worn Whoop devices that provide insights into performance before, during and after races.getty images
Not surprisingly, like many other aspects of the sports industry, sports tech typically focuses on male athletes and the best ways to advance men’s sports. The business logic is not difficult to understand. Men’s sports offer investors and founders a much bigger market and more certainty. It’s the easier path forward. Women’s sports, though, offer the opportunity to exert more influence, to support an underserved market, to innovate in a less crowded space, to gain notice for choosing a more challenging path.
When asked about sports tech solutions for women that excite her, Mills Johnston said “solutions that deliver on the promise of personalization and that allow women to finally use the broad technology base available.” When it comes to sports tech putting more focus on women, she mentioned Whoop and body composition app Spren, two companies in the Drive by DraftKings portfolio.
Plantiga is another company to watch because of its work with elite female athletes, including WNBA players. The startup makes insoles embedded with sensors that collect biomechanical data. In a recent Sports Business Journal article, Plantiga executives talked about how their product can help close the research gap that exists between male and female athletes and prevent injuries. They know that more information about how female bodies move when training and playing starts a virtuous cycle.
Equally significant, the virtuous cycle extends beyond improving individual and team performance to increasing fan engagement. The use of biometric data in broadcasts offers additional insight into what athletes experience, making their feats both more relatable and more impressive. It also offers new ways to tell stories about athletes. Both the additional insight and the new ways to tell stories hold particular value for women’s sports. They can help women’s sports differentiate themselves and reach new audiences.
Of course, mixing broadcasts and individual athlete data raises thorny data privacy issues. But there’s no shortage of intriguing possibilities.
U.S.-based Whoop, Australia-based Catapult and Germany-based Kinexon have all pursued opportunities to integrate data into the fan experience. Thanks to Whoop Live, you may have caught a mountain bike racing broadcast with Puck Pieterse’s real-time heart rate on display. Climbing to 185 beats per minute, it reveals how hard she’s working.
Waydo imagines a future when WNBA fans could know how real-time heart rate correlates with success at the free-throw line.
“I wonder if it could get to where fans are like, ‘Oh, Caitlin Clark’s heart rate is 140 right now. She’s gonna miss,’ versus ‘Her heart rate is 100. She’s gonna make this free throw,’” said Waydo. “Those moments could bring interest, but also an understanding for athletes of what they need to do to really perform in those clutch moments.”
It’s an intriguing vision of the future, one that connects players and fans in new and novel ways. And it’s precisely what women’s sports needs to sustain momentum.
Shira Springer writes about the intersection of sports and culture and teaches leadership communication at MIT Sloan.
Questions about OPED guidelines or letters to the editor? Email editor Jake Kyler at jkyler@sportsbusinessjournal.com
