Podcasts

Michelle Walshe is a film & TV director who has worked with Warner Bros., the BBC, and her own Augusto Group, based in New York City. Leigh Kenyon is a former soccer star, who played with New Zealand’s Football Kingz in Australia’s National Soccer League. Together they founded CoachMate, drawing upon their individual expertise, to make engaging, easy-to-digest content designed to educate and empower grassroots coaches, parents, kids and communities, to create sporting environments where all kids feel at home. The pair are now backed by Australian sportstech heavyweights Stirling Mortlock and James Godfrey’s XV Capital. Michelle and Leigh tell us how we can all make a better place for kids to play and love sport.

No longer do you need to fly to Arizona for high altitude, because Arizona comes right your bedroom, or lounge room, or anywhere you want to set up Box Altitude. Founder Rico Rogers is a former international pro cyclist, who used to benefits of high altitude training to try to bridge the gap he and other clean riders faced during the drug-riddled racing days of the early 2000s. Now he is allowing everyone to create a high altitude environment at home, through their Altitude Bedroom, Training Cloud and Sleep Cloud offerings. Rico, and leading engineer Callum Taylor, give us the inside story on this world-leading technology.

Craig Horobin has spent the past 25 years at the tech cutting edge of sports broadcasting. His first big gig came as the Olympic Broadcast Manager for Telstra at Sydney 2000. Craig spent the next two decades working on FIFA World Cups, Olympics Games, Commonwealth Games, and major international diplomatic events like APEC. In 2015 he started his own shop- Aircast. Aircast provide ultra-low latency in-venue and at home streaming, and they are now working with one of the world’s largest media companies, Comcast NBC Universal, as their streamer of choice.

Australian rugby union legend Stirling Mortlock, and much-vaunted sports mentor James Godfrey, are dynamically opening-up capital flow into sportstech start-ups, through their firm XV Capital. XV are investing capital, acumen and energy to help start-ups reach their full potential. They are behind the hottest sportstech property in the world, the Smart Ball, from UK company Sportable. Their Smart Ball- or as described by Eddie McGuire, ‘Super Footy’- will now be used in the AFL. It is already used in global rugby, while Nike and Adidas are jostling to bring it into soccer, and Sportable are now pushing into the USA. Mortlock & Godfrey are working with a wide array of tech start-ups like CoachMate- who’s mission is to empower women, girls, and all kids to have positive experiences in sport. And the likes of Queensland business, Clubfunders, which is using tech to help breach the perennial divide between how much money sports have, and how much they need. Mortlock & Godfrey tell us there’s so much room for growth and performance in Australian sports technology.

Steph Bofinger is the founder of Fempro Armour. In 2019, Steph and 12 other ladies completed the first all-female motorbike run of the Simpson Desert- four days of gruelling off-road riding, in the unforgiving, and at times fatal, Australian Outback. For Steph, that ride was part of her healing process, having just escaped and survived domestic violence. While the Desert allowed one dark chapter to close, it brought to life a whole new world. On that ride she discovered the dire lack of female protective equipment for riders. All 13 women faced that same problem. So, Steph decided to find the solution. And Fempro Armour was born. Steph has expanded beyond motorsport, and is working hand-in-hand with Bond University with their Rugby Union program. She has also created a range of products for health care, aged care and disability care. Fempro Armour also create products for men and boys. For more info, check out femproarmour.com

Amy Crosland is one of Australian sport’s leading figures turbo-charging the women’s sportstech sector. Born and raised in iconic Tamworth, Amy has built an epic career, working with United Nations, the UK Ministry of Justice, and recently was Australian boss of global tech firm, Orion. She is now ASTN’s Women in Sportstech Boss, with a mission to empower and promote women and girls to become front and centre, in what has been a male-dominated sphere. For more info on women in sportstech, you can email Amy at: amy.crosland@astn.com.au

Will Wright was at the vanguard of e-commerce 20 years ago, and he now leads ECAL’s European expansion. ECAL are the world’s leading calendar marketing solution, and service the English Premier League, Liverpool FC, FC Barcelona, the International Cricket Council, Formula One and many other of the world’s biggest brands. ECAL are an Australian business that have blitzed the international field, and today we’ll hear how they’ve done it, as we get a look under the hood, discuss the growing role of AI, and look at future growth.

Kronos Enterprise use cutting edge tech to deliver key information to their clients across sport, event management, timing solutions, sustainable energy and cyber defence. Lachlan King is a Master of Business Information Technology from RMIT, and is a Global Senior Business Analyst for Kronos. Lachy and his team delivered the sportstech that powered the Special Olympics in Berlin this year. Today we hear how tech can be purpose built to ensure people of all different abilities can fully immerse themselves in sports, and big event experiences.

Anya Lee is regarded as one of the sharpest young minds in Australian architecture. She works with Smartform Architecture, who have just completed the $250 million rebirth of Marvel Stadium in Melbourne. Smartform have made a name for their algorithmic and computational design processes- creating the cutting edge of new world architecture. And they take a holistic, human centred approach. Anya’s passion and expertise runs deep into health and wellbeing, and she is building the Smart360 platform to create immersive, accessible and individualised health and exercise.

Australian Ben Turner is Global Basketball Boss and Head of APAC for the world’s biggest sportstech company, Sportradar. Ben was an early architect of our industry, first with SportingPulse and Genius, before co-founding Atrium and Synergy Sports. His reputation for landing the biggest clients in the world saw Ben head-hunted by Sportradar, where he now helps them set the global agenda. Ben says Aussies must seize the day on the world stage, and he tell us how you can do it!

Alicia Nagle is a passionate community builder. This firefighter and surf life saver has spent the past decade working in media and marketing across Australia and the United Kingdom. Alicia’s grandpa, Kel Nagle, is an Aussie golf legend, who won the 1960 British Open, and was runner-up at the 1965 US Open. Naturally, Alicia’s first venture as a start-up entrepreneur is Zonely- a platform that uses golf as a vehicle for community-building. Zonely’s accent is on promoting physical, mental and social health through bringing diverse groups of people together to have fun and play golf.

Chris Smiles is one of the world’s leading tech-driven architects. He has mastered the use of digital technology and computational design to create sports stadia that will dominate deep into the 21st Century. He is the man behind the quarter of a billion-dollar Marvel Stadium redevelopment. He was a key member of the winning bid to build Optus Stadium, and was lead designer of the new Adelaide Oval. Prior to starting his own firm, Smartform, Chris did major projects everywhere from China to Kazakhstan, and even worked on the Royal Botanic Gardens and Kings Cross Station in London. Today, Chris gives us an exclusive insight into the cutting edge tech driving the future of sports stadiums.

In the past 18 months, crypto has crashed, NFTs have gone from rare gold to rarely spoken about, inflation continues to bite hard, and recession fears loom. Despite the adversity, Australian sportstech has continued to power forward, with ASTN’s Australian Sports Innovation Report 2023, showing the industry now generates $4.25 billion annually. ASTN Chair Dr. Martin Schlegel says the tough economic times are actually driving a greater appetite for the kinds of efficiencies that sportstech companies can deliver. Today we delve deep into the undercurrents of the industry, the new areas for growth, how to survive tight capital markets, and the future of AI in sportstech.

Cricket is one of the world’s oldest sports, first played in the 1500s in England. The modern game is equal parts tradition and revolution- first seen with Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, and now T20. BBL team the Melbourne Renegades, in conjunction with ASTN, selected Spark-Up Studios to digitally revolutionise their fan connection. Today we hear from Spark-Up founder Luke Santamaria and Renegades Fan Engagement Boss, Felicity George on how gamification and personalisation can keep this 16th century sport relevant in the Web-4 era.

Lydia Lassila is one of Australia’s all-time Olympic greats, having won aerials Gold at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and then become the first ever woman to complete a quad-twisting triple somersault at the 2014 Games in Sochi. Lydia says “playing it safe is not my style”, and she used all of that resilience to get her through the depths of despair in 2006, when she tore her ACL apart, twice, in the space of six months. That time of agony was also the genesis of her creation-BodyICE. Experiencing first-hand the desperate lack of suitable ice and heat therapy products, Lydia created her own. BodyICE is now a global business operating in health, wellness and sports. Lydia uses the latest in tech, and also a deep understanding of mental and emotional wellbeing, to help create a wholistic approach to healing and recovery. Her BodyICE Woman range has been a game changer for women around the time of pregnancy and post-pregnancy, and also those having undergone major surgery. Today, Lydia gives us the inside story on an epic sporting career, and her global sensation- BodyICE.

George Gregan is one of greatest rugby union players of all time: A Wallabies captain, 1999 World Cup winner, 5x Bledisloe Cup winner, and the Australian games record holder. George co-founded PTP Fitness to bring his fitness passion and expertise to the wider community. PTP now work with the Wallabies, Matildas, the Diamonds, Boomers and the Opals. They are also with Richmond, Carlton and Sydney in the AFL, and the South Sydney Rabbitohs in the NRL. George is bringing the latest tech to the grassroots community, and helping to enable older Australians to keep living healthy, active lives. Today, we go inside his extraordinary sporting journey.

NTT is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, founded and based in Japan. NTT have become a major player in sports technology, and Aussie Peter Gray is their Global Sportstech & Innovation Boss. Peter heads-up NTT’s Tour De France operation, powering one of the world’s most iconic sports events with revolutionary technology. Today, Pete takes us behind the scenes of the Tour, and we also celebrate the Tour de France Femme, the ground-breaking new women’s cycling event.

Carsten Koerl founded Sportradar in 2001, and the NASDAQ-listed company are the official data partner of FIFA, the ICC, the NBA, MLB, NHL, NASCAR and UEFA. Carsten Koerl is the mastermind who made it happen. With a Masters in Electronic and Microprocessor Engineering, Koerl has always been two steps ahead of the competition. Before the ‘dot-com boom’, he founded sports data company B-WIN, in 1997. Then on a trip through the Australian Outback around the turn of the millennium, Carsten imagined the idea of Sportradar. He’s spent the past two decades making that dream a reality, and making Sportradar the best in the world. Today, we hear how he does it.

Paul Hoon is the CEO of etrainu. He’s been with the Queensland company since day one, 18 years ago, when he started as the Sales Boss. Paul is an Engineer by profession, and was formerly General Manager at SumTotal, and Sales Boss at YomStar. etrainu is an online learning platform now playing on the global stage- working with golf’s PGA and LPGA, Youth Soccer in the USA, as well as Basketball Australia, Surf Life Saving Australia, Gymnastics Australia and Touch Football. Paul shares his passion today about how knowledge and education are key to driving better outcomes for the individual and for the community.

Cameron McKenzie-McHarg is a 2-time Olympic rower, winning Silver in Beijing. He is a 2-time World Champion, and former Australian Captain. The prodigious athlete was also a top-10 AFL Draft Pick, who went on to become Chair of Rowing Australia, forge a successful commerce career, and then found 776BC with wife, Kate. 776BC are now a global leader in performance apparel, as the official outfitter of Team USA Rowing, the Ivy League US Colleges, the Aussie Rowing team, and working with others like Major League Baseball teams and Cricket Australia. 776BC products also allow for unique motion-capture performance analysis through their patented technology. Cam takes us inside his cutting edge tech, global conquest, and we reflect on a magnificent sporting career.