Catapult Sign Three-year Partnership with AFLW, Australian Football’s Premier Women’s Competition

Catapult is delighted to announce a partnership with the AFLW women’s league ahead of their second season of competition, forming a comprehensive alliance between Catapult, Champion Data, and the AFL.

Following a league-wide partnership between the two Australian-based sports data companies and the Australian Football League (AFL) in 2015, this AFLW deal sees all men’s and women’s teams at the elite and pathways levels wearing Catapult devices in training and matches, allowing them to monitor their performance using a consistent platform.

The broader AFL partnership with Champion Data has been in place for two years, and will run in parallel with the AFLW deal for the next three years.

AFL Head of Women’s Football Nicole Livingstone is excited about the opportunity to leverage world-leading technology to quantify athlete performance.

“As the NAB AFL Women’s competition continues to evolve, the importance of elite training equipment partnered with world class data, plays a major part in the professional growth of our competition.” Ms Livingstone said. “This is a partnership that will greatly assist our clubs and players to develop a greater suite of professional training techniques and maximise game-day performance.”

The deal cements the importance of wearable technology within Australian football, a sport which boasts global leadership in sports science application, and perfectly aligns with Catapult’s strategy according to the company’s CEO, Joe Powell.

“This partnership brings to life our strategic pillars of: delivering our world-leading sports performance technology to elite teams, helping provide a pathway program for aspiring AFLW players through the use of our technology, and leveraging live in-game data for fan engagement and commercial opportunities,” Powell said. “We feel we are really well positioned as the only technology platform in sport to drive performance and fan engagement outcomes for the innovative AFL Women’s competition, and we look forward to working on this unique partnership.”

In addition to performance management benefits, uniform wearable technology usage results in the ability of live data to be broadcast on-screen, adding further value to the existing statistics captured within the sport by Champion Data. This also highlights the strength of the joint venture between Catapult and Champion Data to provide a single solution to all teams within the AFL.

Nicole Pensko, Head of Australia and New Zealand Partnerships at Catapult, believes this joint venture to be a formidable alliance for the sport at all levels.

“The AFL Women’s competition is the embodiment of performance and engagement innovation, and will have ramifications for every professional and aspiring footballer in the Australia,” Pensko said.

The 2018 AFL Women’s season is the league’s second year of competition and will kick off on Friday, February 2nd at Ikon Park.

To find out more about the technology that will be used by AFLW teams, discover our OptimEye S5 device here.