Sports Wearable for Football/Soccer – Top 3 Products

Sports Wearable is a growing field. Teams as well as players want to use the latest gadgets to track performance and help them further improve their skills. To support these, numerous Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns have launched in recent times with some amazing ideas and products however, only some have successful till date.

Along with numerous new products coming out, three products are out in market for some time now and have already built a good customer base with some major clubs across the world. Today, we will review these three products and summarize our findings for you.

OptimEye  

OptimEye is a product of Catapult, world leader in athlete analytic and have over 400 of best known names in leg sports as customer. OptimEye comes with 3 different variations. OptimEye S5, OptimEye X4 and OptimEye G5.

OptimEye G5 is the first ever goalkeeper monitor, it tracks directions, jumps to analyse the movements of a goalkeeper. It is 40% smaller then the S5.

OptimEye X4 is the entry system monitor that helps calculate:

• Force, turn rate, orientation, backward/forward/sideways running
• Video footage including replays and animations
• Reports include graphic tools including plotting player position, velocity, heart rate, effort lengths and recovery time.

OptimEye S5 is the most advanced product that the company has to offer. Not only it is military tested, it is the world’s first GNSS monitor for team sports. Along with the features of OptimEye X4, this device

• Accurately tracks collisions
• Connects to Open Fields product, which is a highly customized solution for data analysis and performance measurement.

Viper Pod

ViperPod is a product of STATsports. ViperPod is mainly used by European football clubs but many NBA team are their customers as well. The capability of Viper Pod includes some of the standard features like measuring total distance, speed, acceleration, load distance and heart rate. Having said that, one of the best features of Viper Pod is the software that is associated to its device. It has real-time analytic capability to see player position and motion from a bird eye view on a screen. This feature would normally need a camera but that’s the beauty of the product.

Adidas miCoach

Already a big name in sporting industry, Adidas has launched miCoach. It is not one product but rather a platform that has many devices associated to it. The product is intensively used in some of the MSL teams, National Football teams of Germany, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina and Japan.

The platform helps you measure some of the standard features mentioned above but one of the unique offerings they have is the smart ball. Priced at $199 USD or £145 GBP, the product not only tracks the movement of the ball but it helps:

• Tracks speed, spin, strike and ball path.
• Learn to make skillful kicks
• Provide step by step guidance and instant feedback

All these three products are somewhat similar but each offer something unique as a selling point. We are not sure if anyone uses two or all three of these products in parallel but since many sporting organisations like FIFA forbids the use of this gadgets and devices in the competitive match, these products are only in use in training sessions.

Though, sooner or later, we predict the law will change and the use of these devices will be permitted. Will this change the sports forever? Will the game be better with these devices or without? Can it be expanded to provide real-time umpiring and referring in the near by future?

Leave a message below to share your thoughts with us!