The Wasps RFC, an English professional rugby union club, has partnered with Fitbit to be the club’s official wearable technology partner.
As Fitbit is trying to fix sinking stock value it makes sense for the company to work with professional athletes. If they can successfully reach fitness-minded consumers while also serving top athletes then they have a powerful business mix on their hands.
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Essentially, Fitbit would help Wasps’ coaches by providing fitness and training data for all their athletes. With this data, Fitbit will also generate a data management dashboard for the coaching staff to monitor their senior and academy players. This will allow players and trainers to set fitness goals and measure accordingly.
Wasps’ group commercial director, Luke Organ, is happy with the club’s progressive outlook on training. In a news release on the Wasps’ site he said, “This is another step in Wasps’ ambition to work alongside global brands which successfully push the boundaries and are leaders in their respective fields. We are extremely excited about our partnership with Fitbit, which will create a platform to further improve our ability to deliver live analytics and provide clear visualisation of players’ physical performance and development.”
Organ went on to explain that the new partnership with Fitbit may go beyond simply training players and could help them to track and engage their fans as well.
“We are continuously exploring ways in which we can develop our performance as a team and as a business, through the latest technology. In-stadia research is underway to establish further opportunities to engage and track customer insight in order to enhance fans’ match day experience. We look forward to working with Fitbit, who join a strong portfolio of brands who will help us achieve these goals.”
Gareth Jones, VP and General Manager for Fitbit EMEA explained how the company’s wearables won’t just be used for the players during practice; but could be worn all day to provide data on everything players do. Theoretically, this would be done to create player-specific training regiments.
“Because our trackers are designed to be worn all day, not just on the field, monitoring key data such as continuous heart rate, resting heart rate and sleep patterns is now much easier. Via the app and dashboard, Fitbit devices deliver a powerful set of data that can help Wasps make smart training.”
As of now this appears to be a partnership that makes sense on both sides and it should be interesting to see if Fitbit can further enter the elite sports level with their wearables.