You could feel the tension in the air when our President Berthold Baurek-Karlic announced the jury’s decision on November 25, 2019 at the Park Hyatt Vienna:
Runnin’City from France is the winner of the European SportsTech Award!
The app combines sport with sightseeing: “As an internationally oriented company offering running experiences in over 200 cities worldwide, we are particularly excited to be awarded the title of European SportsTech Champion”, says co-founder Olivier Lebleu. The enthusiastic runner also used his visit to explore Vienna with his app.
Six finalists from five countries
The SportsTech Final was already the sixth batch of the European Super Angels Club awards series. The previous focus topics have been Cybersecurity, Digital Health and AI. Berthold Baurek-Karlic, President of the Club, now invites members, partners and friends to (co)-invest in these top selected startups:
With the SportsTech Awards we want to promote an innovative market segment and focus on young companies with high growth opportunities. Our analysts looked at over 1000 startups, from which 63 candidates were invited for in-depth interviews and finally the best companies were invited to national pitching competitions in the UK, France, Germany and Switzerland. Our selection process is very intense, however this was the only way to once again present six outstanding startups to our 150 attendees which included investors, company representatives, club members and guests. Even though there can only be one champion, all finalists are already winners.
From Big Data to 3D technology
The winner in Great Britain was the sports data service provider PlayerData. The company offers a wearable that enables athletes to track, analyze and optimize their performance. In Switzerland, GotCourts qualified as a finalist, the “Booking.com for sports fields”. Austria’s representative in the final was IPEAK. The company created an app which provides its users access to personalised workouts by professional trainers. Fatmap from Germany presented its innovative 3D outdoor map technology. The Hamburg-based startup Sponsoo was nominated through a wildcard for the finals and presented their leading marketplace for sports sponsoring.
We already published a more thourough article listing each and every contestant of the national competitions as well.
International Jury
The decision for Runnin’City was made by our international jury of experts: Alexander Lena, CEO of SportsWorld, Paul Schif, Managing Director of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation in Germany and Austria, Thomas Kolbabek, Business Angel and CTO at Greentube, Josef Lenhart, Impact Investor and Board Member at Sporteo, Benjamin Penkert, founder of the Berlin company SportsTechX, and Berthold Baurek-Karlic as representative of the European Super Angels Club.
The Liechtensteinische Landesbank (Österreich) AG supported the event once again:
“As the leading asset management bank in Austria, we want to be as close as possible to the creation and development of promising new business models and start an exchange with the next generation of entrepreneurs,” said Deputy Chairman Harald Friedrich.
SportsTech – digital revolution in the sports industry
SportsTech is the combination of sport and technology. The fact that SportsTech is not just a trend can be seen in the rapid growth of the digital sports market in recent years. For Baurek-Karlic it is clear:
SportsTech will continue to gain relevance among investors and in 2018 it already had a global market value of around 27.6 billion US dollars and an annual growth rate of 14.7 percent. Runtastic, a flagship company in Austria, as well as the German app Freeletics, show that European success stories in this industry already exists. Join us as w write the next ones!
