Smarter Sports
Awards Winners
Sports. Smarter
Our Sponsors and Partners
The Smarter Sports Awards winners represent the most effective applications of innovation in sport today. Across athlete performance, fan engagement, sports broadcast, venues, sports data and commercial strategy, these are the brands and sports organizations delivering how the sports industry operates and grows.
Selected by a global panel of senior leaders, visionaries and stars from sport, business, and technology, each winner reflects more than innovation; these are solutions that influence decision-making, move budgets, and create measurable and tangible progression across the world of sport.
For rights holders, teams, venues, investors, and tech partners, this is a clear view of what really works in modern sport – without the hype.
The Smarter Sports Awards, formerly The Sports Technology Awards, remain the benchmark for identifying the companies and ideas defining the next era.
2026 Winners
Our winners were announced during the inaugural Smarter Sports Awards Global Broadcast
Smarter Performance Intelligence
Infosys for AI Commentary
The judges said:
“Here’s what the judges thought: By translating complex live performance data into instantly usable insight, this platform reimagined the way sport could understand and communicate action in real time.”
Smarter Data and Analytics Technology
Predictive Fitness for Predictive Data Intelligence
The judges said:
“This is data made truly usable. The platform transforms complexity into clarity, helping teams, broadcasters and stakeholders interpret performance faster and with greater confidence. This is a standout example of analytics serving decision quality.”
Smarter AI in Sport
Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club for the BHAFC Intelligence Ecosystem
The judges said:
“This is AI applied with real operational intelligence. Rather than technology for theatre, Brighton and Hove Albion has embedded intelligence into workflow which delivers speed of decision making and yields a clear competitive advantage.”
Smarter Coaching Systems
GSI Performance for Five Fights Framework
The judges said:
“GSI has reshaped the way contact sport is coached, moving the discipline beyond tradition and repetitive live drills into a far more precise model. Its methodology, patented training aids, and structured return to play protocols have all helped improve technical accuracy while reducing unnecessary physical contact in training. Their approach is setting a new standard for collision sports coaching that is smarter, safer, and more sustainable.”
Smarter Ball and Racquet Innovation
Rapsodo
The judges said:
“This is an exciting innovation that immediately translates into better coaching, better decisions and better results. Rapsodo offers outstanding precision, usability and value.”
Smarter Athletics and Aquatics Innovation
FORM for HeadCoach 2.0
The judges said:
“This is a brilliant fusion of performance insight and athlete usability. The product delivers meaningful, in the moment coaching support in a sport with a technically demanding environment.”
Smarter Female Athlete Innovation
Stats Perform and Capgemini for AI‑Driven Insights
The judges said:
“This entry was a thoughtful and highly relevant piece of work that puts female athlete performance at the centre of intelligence. It is important, scalable and genuinely progressive.”
Smarter Motorsport Technology
Motion Applied for Powering the Pinnacle of Motorsport
The judges said:
“Motion Applied takes this category for its technology which sits at the very heart of elite motorsport performance. Trusted across Formula 1, NASCAR and IndyCar, its next generation control is not simply supporting teams it’s helping define how modern racing is run, optimized and governed.”
Smarter Venue and Infrastructure Innovation
HOK for Avicii Arena
The judges said:
“HOK has taken a venue that was underperforming and not simply renovated but revolutionized it. Their work solved long standing problems to improve fan experience, increase flexibility, preserve heritage, avoid rebuild emissions, and return it to relevance at the highest level of sport and entertainment.”
Smarter Sports Broadcast and Production
JioStar for From Stadiums to Screens
The judges said:
“This was a brilliantly executed piece of broadcast innovation. The scale, reliability and audience centric design make this a standout example of production technology at work in modern sport.”
Smarter Immersive Sports Experiences
Piing for Games for Crowds
The judges said:
“This platform reimagines how live audiences participate in sport, turning spectators into active contributors to the experience and creating a deeper sense of shared occasion.”
Smarter Fan Platforms and Communities
Wimbledon, AELTC and IBM for Match Chat
The judges said:
“This was a sophisticated fan experience that feels immediate, intuitive and genuinely useful. This work shows how technology can deepen engagement without getting in the way of the sport action.”
Smarter Fan Intelligence and Personalization
Monterosa for Fanatics Survivor
The judges said:
“Monterosa won because this work shows how personalization can move beyond data into genuine fan relevance, creating experiences that feel individual, timely and commercially powerful.”
Smarter Strategic Partnership
DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga and AWS for Transforming Sports at Scale
The judges said:
“The judges felt that this partnership was an excellent demonstration of what happens when strategic alignment meets technical excellence. This was a collaboration built not around sponsorship optics, but measurable operational and commercial impact.”
Smarter Sports Start-Up of the Year
StumpEye
The judges said:
“Elegant in its simplicity and ambitious in its reach. StumpEye is making advanced cricket technology radically more accessible. By replacing high cost infrastructure with intelligent, scalable systems, it opens performance insight to clubs and communities far beyond the elite tier.”
Smarter Innovation of the Year
World Rugby and Prevent Biometrics for Instrumented Smart Mouthguards
The judges said:
“This is a powerful example of technology solving a real and urgent issue in sport. The work stands out because it combines elite performance intelligence with meaningful athlete welfare, turning invisible risk into vital decision making.”
Judges Award
Apple Fitness+
The judges said:
“With its Fitness+ work, Apple shows it understands something so many technologies and organizations miss: technology only matters if people use it.
Fitness+ has become one of the most influential bridges between how elite performance thinks, and consumers behave every day. It has blended hardware, coaching, data, and habit formation at extraordinary global scale. It is also a classic example of what Apple does best: creating a frictionless link between its customers and genuinely useful solutions, making complex technology feel remarkably easy. In a crowded market, it makes fitness feel easy – and miilions of people around the world agree.”
