A Smarter Soccer Game: Israel’s PlayerMaker Raises $10M For Sports Analytics Wearables

Israel’s PlayerMaker has raised $10 million in a Series B led by Singapore-based firm FengHe Group, for its smart sensors which attach to player footwear. The funding round will be used to grow in Europe, the United States, and Asia.

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The product – a small strap which attaches to the side of a soccer boot by a silicon strap and contains a gyroscope and accelerometer – works on analyzing player-specific data. It can tell a coach how many touches a player has on a ball, or the total distance travelled during a game (and top speed during that duration).

PlayerMaker said the device could also be used for injury prevention and optimization (for example, a sports club in Israel called Maccabi Tel Aviv uses the wearable to see if players are hitting training session goals). The sports wearables industry has had a sizeable amount of funding: Crunchbase data records 6,040 deals with a dollar total of $33 billion.

PlayerMaker, which launched last year, has gathered up a database of soccer player movements across the world. It pointed to Catapult as a competitor: a chest-mounted sensor that uses GPS, while PlayerMaker is strapped onto the boo

PlayerMaker’s product has showed up in teams across 10 countries. Clubs include Manchester City, Clb American, Toronto FC, and Argentina’s Olympic national team, according to a release.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias