The history of rugby start-ups is inseparable from the professionalization of this sport, which remained amateur for decades. In the words of Ovalie legend Daniel Herrero in his Dictionary lovers of modern day rugby, the discipline “has been dozing for a long time”. Its transformation dates back to the 1990s, when new rules of the game were introduced to limit trauma during physical contact. The discipline is also becoming more scientific. As in football, players are now measured from all angles, their nutrition monitored to the nearest gram, impacts and movements tracked to the millimeter. A boon for sportech, which propose to rationalize the sporting approach, for more performance. Driven by a thirst for statistics and analyzes among pros and amateurs alike, funding for the sector has also exploded by 360% worldwide, all sports combined, and this, in just five years, to total 10 billion euros in fundraising in 2021, according to a study by Roland Berger.
Coming out of the DIY era
First designed for golf, Reeplay’s analysis screens quickly caught the attention of clubs and national rugby teams. “The Top 14 teams were tinkering with tents with lambda television screens which were not suitable for the outdoors”, says Emmanuel Guillot, who launched his start-up in 2017 and now works with Lou Rugby (Lyon ) and Castres Olympique.
Its screens placed on golf carts will also equip the French and Japanese selections on their respective training camps during the World Cup. A nice showcase: the previous edition, in 2019, was the most watched rugby event of all time with 857 million viewers worldwide. “Our goal is for these uses to become the norm for young players,” hopes the self-taught engineer, aware that he is still in the “evangelization” phase of the markets, especially in the southern hemisphere.
Higher budgets than amateur football
For MyCoachPro, the oval ball is already carrying. This application for the daily management of sports structures has won over around twenty professional clubs. “The idea is to bring together in one and the same place sports performance and extra-sports management”, summarizes its general manager Cindy Spaziani, who now approaches amateur clubs, with more muscular budgets in rugby than in football. Its software makes it possible to follow the career of the athlete, to centralize the GPS data resulting from the matches or to organize its administrative documents. In the ruler’s calendar, the World Cup is marked with a cross. His start-up, which employs 30 people, wants to increase the share of rugby in its activity, currently limited to 10% of its 2022 turnover of 1.3 million euros.
By targeting amateur clubs, it is now encroaching on Sporteasy’s playing field. Launched in 2012 by two engineers, this transversal management tool seeks to make life easier for these structures. “The district clubs had an Excel table to track their dues on one side, and endless emails on the other: it was a real hassle”, summarizes its co-founder Nizar Melki, who claims 2, 6 million users worldwide, all sports combined. For him, the World Cup brings the promise of a significant increase in the number of licensees, a source of great growth potential.
Video refereeing and concussion protocols
The arbitration market on rugby pitches is already mature. The sportech Vogo, which has made it its specialty, is even listed on the stock exchange. It was she who developed the audio technology that allows Top 14 and Pro D2 referees to communicate despite the ambient noise in the stadiums. It also provides video replays used in game decisions or concussion protocol – when a player suffers a dangerous head impact and it is necessary to determine whether to leave the field.
Christophe Carniel, its founder, refuses for the moment to communicate on the presence of its devices during the world. But he assures him, Vogo is a hit in this niche market. “There are only five or six companies in the world that offer similar tools and we are the only French ones,” argues the entrepreneur, himself a rugby player in his spare time. The Montpellier-based sportech forecasts a stable turnover of 12 million euros in 2023, of which 60% will come from exports. Next step: the deployment of an artificial intelligence trained with its image bank and which will make it possible to alert in the event of dangerous shocks, in particular among amateurs and the youngest, devoid of video analysts.