Output Sports, an Irish sports technology company that is focused on making elite-level sports science simple and scalable, announced that it has closed a $4.8 million (€4.61 million) pre-A funding round. This funding round round brings in new support from athlete-led Apex Capital, Uni.Fund, and Dopamine Sports. The funding also included existing investors Elkstone, Atlantic Bridge, and Enterprise Ireland. This financing also features a number of angel investors, including Jim Kelliher.
Output Sports, which is a spin out company from UCD, was co-founded in 2020 by Dr Martin O’Reilly, Dr. Darragh Whelan, Julian Eberle and Professor Brian Caulfield, and currently provides over 800 sports organizations, including over half of all English Premier League clubs, with the insights needed to make more informed, data-backed decisions to improve athletic performance.
The company’s technology enables strength and conditioning coaches, sport scientists and rehab professionals for capturing and analyzing athletic data using a single wearable sensor system. And it can be used across multiple sports including both amateur and professional football, swimming, basketball and golf for velocity-based training, reactive strength, and power development to optimize athletes’ performance on the local and global stage.
Last year, Output Sport’s technology captured 30M measurements from athletes around the globe, and it also played a pivotal role in multiple medal-winning performances at the 2024 Olympic Games including Daniel Wiffen’s record-breaking gold in swimming for Ireland and China’s Zheng Qinwen’s historic tennis gold. And Output Sports has worked with multiple championship-winning teams across the US major sports leagues and the national teams in soccer and rugby sevens.
To serve this growing demand, Output Sports recently opened a US office based in Boston. And the company currently works with professional US sports leagues such as the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS and the WNBA, and aims to support even more organizations from professional leagues to high school and college sports programs.
This new funding round will be used to accelerate US expansion and hiring across sales, marketing, product development, data science, and customer support.
Output Sports looks to become a widely used resource for strength, power, and movement assessment with a goal of reaching 100 million recorded exercise repetitions in 2025.
KEY QUOTES:
“Output Sports is committed to developing data-driven insights that support coaches and athletes. Our team has worked hard to build a platform that meets the needs of some of the world’s leading sports teams such as New Zealand’s All Blacks, England’s national soccer team and the Colorado Buffaloes and delivers meaningful value through data. This investment will help us support our growth in the US, deepen our technology capabilities, and grow our team to support our increasing customer base.”
– Dr. Martin O’Reilly, Co-founder and CEO of Output Sports
“In sports performance, only a handful of companies truly excel in addressing issues. Output Sports is among these select few. With their cutting-edge technology, they have successfully translated the science of sports into practical applications for the field.”
– Award-winning performance coach Spencer Tatum, who works with leading professional golfer Jon Rahm
“At Apex, we invest in the future of sport. Off-field measurement and driving competition in the gym are key to success for sports organisations and Output Sports is best in class in this crucial part of the sports tech stack.”
– Koen Bosma, Head of Venture Capital at Apex Capital
“Rooted in cutting-edge research, Output Sports is redefining performance analytics in sports and fitness. Their innovative approach to simplifying and enhancing athletic training aligns perfectly with our vision of empowering transformative technology. We look forward to supporting their journey to revolutionize the industry.”
– Dora Trachana, Partner at Uni.Fund
“Since Elkstone first invested in Output Sports at seed stage, we have seen the founders build an incredible roster of well-known customers across the sports world. As the team continues to put data-driven insights at the centre of athlete development, we are proud to reaffirm our support alongside strong international co-investors.”
– Niall McEvoy, Head of Venture at Elkstone
“Output Sports is an excellent example of the research based deep tech businesses we invest in at Atlantic Bridge. Since first investing in 2020 we have worked together to provide access to international markets, institutional co-investors and talent. I am optimistic about future growth as the company continues to scale rapidly in key markets, improving performance for all athletes.”
– Dr Helen McBreen, Board Director and Partner at Atlantic Bridge
