From household names to promising upstarts, these companies are making Leeds a SportsTech force to be reckoned with.
Yorkshire has always been sports-mad, and nowhere fits that description more than Leeds. Add in the 21st-century digital expertise the city is known for and you get SportsTech, a niche pioneered here as long ago as the 1990s. These are the big players, both home grown and drafted in, helping to make Leeds a major name in the business.
Planet Sport (incl Football 365)
Credit: Planet Sport
In the digital world, Football 365 almost counts as prehistoric. Founded in 1997, it met with success so quickly that parent company 365 Corporation replicated its format in 14 other fields. In 2007, Sky snapped up the 365 Media Group for £96 million, and its titles, including Football 365, were taken over by Sky Sports. But through a series of deals too complex to go into, Football 365 returned to Leeds in 2015, and in 2019 Planet Football was relaunched after 15 years lying dormant.
In 2021, the Planet Sport Publishing and Yormedia businesses merged to (re-)create Planet Sport, with 120 people working under Gipton-born CEO Barrie Jarrett. Claiming to be ‘the UK’s leading independent in sports media’, Planet Sport creates branded sports content using video, data, audio, editorial and social media for customers including William Hill, MSN and Vodacom. Like Sky, it’s also launched its own gaming arm, Planet Sport Bet, which covers over 20 sports around the world.
Sky Betting and Gaming
Credit: Flutter
Sky Betting & Gaming is one of the leading online betting and gaming operators in the UK. Yorkshire tech entrepreneur Peter Wilkinson set up Leeds-based Planet Online, the UK’s first viable business internet service provider, in 1995. When he sold it to Energis in 1998, he retained PlanetFootball, which in 1999 was reversed into former Leeds United CEO Chris Akers’ Sports Internet Group plc. The following year, Sky acquired it for £301 million – and Sky Betting & Gaming was born.
The company now has five core brands – Sky Bet, Sky Bingo, Sky Casino, Sky Poker and Sky Vegas – and business is good. In March, Dublin-based Flutter Entertainment, which has owned Sky Betting & Gaming since 2020, reported a group revenue of £7.7 billion, with profits of £336 million. It remains the biggest tech employer in Leeds and is popular among its 1,400 employees, which is little wonder, since Flutter gave them an average of £1,000 worth of shares each during the pandemic.
Catapult
Credit: Jake Croft
If you’ve ever seen a footballer take off his shirt post-game, you’ve probably seen Catapult’s most famous piece of kit. It’s a smart vest containing a GPS tracker, used to map players’ movements. Using the data and heat maps it generates, coaches can assess crucial factors like fitness, effort and tactical awareness. They’re a vital component of the modern game. In fact, Catapult’s customers include Leeds United, many a Premier League team and all 32 in the NFL.
Although it’s not Leeds born, Catapult chose the city above all others when it was deciding where to open a new office, and moved into its Yorkshire HQ on Boar Lane in late 2022. It’s actually an Australian firm, headquartered in Melbourne, and was spun out of the Australian Institute of Sport and Co-operative Research Centres in 2006. It now employs more than 400 staff across five continents and has 3,800 professional sports team clients across 40 sports in more than 100 countries.
Pitchero
Credit: Pitchero
There’s so much money at the top of the sporting tree that it’s easy to forget how much can be made at grassroots level. Around 1.5 million people play football regularly in England, and they all belong to some kind of club. Pitchero has tapped into this rich vein by providing sports clubs with an all-singing, all-dancing platform to manage their organisations online. It started as an easy way of sharing teamsheets, fixture lists and league rankings, but soon added extra capabilities.
Pitchero now offers GPS player trackers and the ability to share highlights in real time, making top-tier technology available to everyone. It has a customer base of 70,000 teams, with two million registered users – which is no small feat. Founded in 2007 by CEO Mark Fletcher and CTO Jon Milsom during their final year at university, it grew into a national concern in Leeds and is still very much a part of the city’s tech community, although it’s now based a few miles to the south in Tingley.
Hudl
Credit: Hudl
Sports software giant Hudl is another company that has made itself at home in Leeds, saying it was ‘excited about the digital, data and creative strengths of the Leeds City Region’. It opened its EMEA leadership base at Platform, next to the railway station, in 2018 to complement existing offices in London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Frankfurt and Marseille. Lucky Leeds because in June 2023, Hudl was listed in Newsweek magazine’s 100 Global Most Loved Workplaces.
Another factor that may have weighed in Leeds’ favour is the fact that Leeds United and Leeds Rhinos were long-standing clients of Hudl’s Sportscode software, as are Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint Germain. Hudl is based in Lincoln, Nebraska and is a world leader in the field of sports performance and integrated video analysis tools, employing more than 3,200 employees in 17 countries, and serving more than 6 million users in over 40 sports.
Digital Sports North
Credit: DSN
It’s not just companies that are helping make Leeds a national hub for sports tech, Digital Sport North has an important role to play too. It was founded by Andy Roberts, the Chief Marketing Officer of Planet Sport, and Rob Powell, the owner of Leeds social media agency Spike, in 2022. It’s a forum for the sports tech industry that brings together professionals in gaming, media, publishing, broadcasting and rights at events run throughout the year.
They’ve made it their mission to shine a light on the people and businesses working in SportsTech in the North, and in doing so, they’re helping to raise awareness about careers in the industry and inspire the next generation of digital leaders. Previous events have focused on data in sport, and the relationship between football and the media, attracting representatives from FIFA and Formula One, Leeds United and Liverpool FC, as well as BBC Sport and Sky Sport, ITV and Channel 4.
Cover image credit: Hudl.
