Playermaker Raised $40M to Make Elite-Level Performance Tracking Accessible to All Athletes

Playermaker, the wearable footwear-mounted performance tracker, today announced that it has raised $40M in funding to date, led by Ventura Capital Group, with additional investment by MIG Capital, Pegasus Tech Ventures, and others. The funding will be used to further extend the company’s global reach with an emphasis on accelerating its growth within the consumer market and developing a new Multi-Sport Platform to drive Playermaker’s expansion beyond soccer, beginning with basketball.

Playermaker’s wearable performance tracking device turns any footwear into a connected solution that captures professional-grade technical, tactical, biomechanical, and physical data from the source of motion. This provides valuable insights and analysis to enable and empower athletes at any level to maximize their skills, monitor injury risk, as well as expedite injury recovery.

Until now, performance tracking resources, which help to inform coaches and athletes about training impact, match performance, and managing injuries, have typically only been widely available for male professional athletes – reflecting a historic disparity in funding and technology between male and female athletes.

Playermaker’s mission is to infuse data with purpose, with the goal of bringing equal opportunities for all athletes no matter their age, skill level, or gender. By making elite-level performance tracking and data insights affordable and accessible to all athletes, Playermaker is leading the sport technology market towards a more equitable future.

“Our mission is to challenge the disparities in sport, striving to attain fair play and equal opportunity for all by ensuring that everyone can access the knowledge they need to improve their game,” said Guy Aharon, CEO and Co-Founder of Playermaker. “We are empowering and inspiring boys and girls across the world of sports to stay active, pursue their dreams, and be the best they can be regardless of their discipline, location, or resources. Ultimately, wherever there is passion and shoes, that’s where we want to be.”

Unlike other fitness trackers on the market, the Playermaker solution is able to track technical performance and offer further-reaching insights due to the position on both the left and right shoe. This enables it to pair the usual surface-level metrics with complex functional factors such as foot placement/angle, foot velocity, acceleration on hard cuts vs. straightaway runs, and more – allowing for more unique and astute insights.

The device requires no additional infrastructure or installation and doesn’t require WIFI, cell service, or external power to collect and analyze data from any given session. It can also be used both indoors and outdoors, differentiating it from GPS systems and making it easily adaptable across a range of sporting activities.

“Such a groundbreaking sports technology is extremely rare to find. Playermaker “ups the game” for professional and recreational footballers alike, creating a unique level of deep insight and competitive edge for players in a simple and user-friendly way,” said Mo El Husseiny, Ventura’s Managing Partner. “We now have the ability to track performance data and provide deep and instant insight far beyond the usual metrics – something that every athlete can benefit from and a vision that we at Ventura are very excited to back.

Guy and the team have proven Playermaker’s immense value by already dominating the world of football. More importantly, the Playermaker team is driven by a clear purpose and goal – to better the world of sports for all who play them. They digitized and gamified the world’s favorite game and that’s just for starters.”

This announcement comes after a series of successful partnerships, including the announcement of Liverpool FC wonderkid, Harvey Elliott, as brand Ambassador, the expansion of its partnership and launch of a community initiative with Fulham FC, as well as an extended project with the English Football Association (FA) and Leeds Beckett University to explore and provide in-depth insights into the demands of women’s soccer.

The company has experienced substantial international growth across academy, college, semi-professional, and elite level teams, with one of the most popular sports in the world – across demographics. Using the institutional knowledge and data it has gained in soccer, Playermaker has already begun rolling out its Multi-Sport Platform. In doing so, Playermaker is working with a number of elite and recreational basketball teams in the US and EU, establishing the foundation for a new, multisport, B2C offering.

“We have been blown away by the support Playermaker has received internationally and our investors have shown great faith in our team and the potential of our technology,” continued Aharon. “Our journey began with soccer but the data, knowledge, and experience we’ve gained is a rock-solid foundation that we are excited to leverage to elevate all athletes across sports. We are confident that the success we have seen in soccer will be replicated in other sports because nothing feels better than having all the tools you need to improve when playing a sport you love at any level.”

Established in 2016, Playermaker is a sports technology company revolutionizing the way that athletes at all levels develop their skills by providing next-level insight into performance with its wearable footwear performance tracker. Now the fastest-growing footwear performance platform, Playermaker’s ground-breaking technology transforms any footwear into a connected solution. It then provides in-depth analysis and monitoring of key athletic performance indicators via foot movements for team and individual use.

With offices in London, Miami, and Tel Aviv, Playermaker’s solutions are used by elite clubs, academies, and recreational athletes worldwide and deliver a competitive advantage to some of the most forward-thinking athletes, teams, and coaches with no additional infrastructure or installation required.