Southeast Asia is home to a plethora of tech startups. The region boasts a variety of new companies covering industries such as health, finance, investment, food, and gaming. However, as the region becomes a target for global sports like the NBA and Drone Racing League, there is a new breed of startups emerging: sports tech. The Southeast Asia sports tech scene is rapidly growing and covering a range of divisions, including, performance and activity, fans and media, bets and gaming, and organisation and management. The diverse spectrum of sports tech startups popping up could be a gamechanger for both sports performance and engagement with fans around the world. As technology evolves, the needs of modern-day sports professionals and their fans have created exciting possibilities. As the bar continues to rise, here are some of the most progressive emerging sport tech startups we are keeping an eye on.
We look at the Singapore startups to watch out for in the next 6 months
Global Sports Commerce
Global Sports Commerce(GSC), founded in 2015 and headquartered in Singapore, is one of the world’s largest Sports Technology solutions companies. Providing fan engagement solutions, LED video screens, software to manage scoring, electronic scoreboards–the company has offices in 16 cities, across 10 countries. GSC also supplies sponsorship and commercial management solutions and consulting services to top-ranking worldwide sports stakeholders. They serve sports bodies, stadiums, brands, leagues, and rights holders. GSC has already partnered with big-name clubs and leagues such as the New Zealand Cricket, English Premier League, Singapore GP, Irish Rugby Football, and the Australian Football League.
TVConal
This Singapore-based startup is a television content analytics company supplying solutions to media, broadcasting, and entertainment organisations to help produce higher quality content and distinguish new opportunities. TVConal analytics solutions include a variety of applications and tech providing insights on real-time predictions, game strategies, understanding players behaviours, and can detect important in-game events. By using the right intelligence, they can obtain incredible insights from stats and information received through state-of-the-art technologies. These include player and ball tracking, and sensors that can be worn in the players’ shoes and helmets. By implementing pattern recognition and machine learning–TVConal can create data-driven indications of future events and recognise the most captivating content of a sporting match.
Labbola
Founded in 2012, Labbola is a sports analytics company specialising in football data and statistics, particularly in Southeast Asia. The company combines their passions for sports and science to provide statistics and data management for leagues, media, coaching, and competition systems, using an integrated technology approach. For sports professionals, their services include data team and player evaluation, youth development, talent scouting, and video statistics player profiling. For the sports media and entertainment industries, Labbola covers live statistics for T.V., data and prediction games, sports marketing and social media campaign support, journalism and news content, and 2D and 3D sports graphic design and animation.
FunDeavour
FunDeavour is a Malaysian-based startup founded in 2016 and created to support and connect talented gamers with sponsors and brands. The company uses a social platform to assist passionate gamers who want to get noticed in eSports, streaming, and Youtube. The startup engages closely with brands who want to connect with enthusiastic and budding gamer audiences. Gamers who complete a series of adventure-themed challenges on the FunDeavours platform can be rewarded with points that they can use to collect free gaming tools such as headsets and keyboards. FunDeavour also offers exposure for gamers who complete their adventures, with features for their online audience, and exclusive interviews with their media partner.
Deemples
Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Deemples is a free app that helps solo golfers find, match, and connect with other golfers to play at any time or location. It gives users the option of joining available existing games, or creating their own and letting others join in. Deemples call it the Uber or Tinder for golfers. The company encourages golfers to expand their personal network and golf contacts. The Deemples app is available for Apple and Android users and is as easy as registering an account and creating rounds of golf for dates that suit them, at preferred courses, times, and with the desired number of players. Once users have created their game, they can invite other players and friends. The app is currently available in five countries: Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines.
We spoke to David Wong from Deemples to learn more about his startup
The combination of technology with science, data, and humans, is creating an exciting time in the tech ecosystem in Southeast Asia. As international sporting leagues continue to target the region as a means to expand their audience, sports tech startups in Southeast Asia will no doubt continue to pop up, continually striving to improve the way sports professionals perform, connect, and engage with their worldwide fans.