Scotland's sporting universities operate at high levels when it comes to athletic performanceplaceholder image
Scotland's sporting universities operate at high levels when it comes to athletic performance
Make Scotland the place SportsTech founders come to test new technology, writes Ross Tuffee
In 2020 the world’s most valuable sports team, the Dallas Cowboys, was worth £3.5 billion – just five years later their value had almost tripled to £9.6 billion.
Sport is big business. Teams’ valuations have grown with the surge in media rights fees, but investment is flowing into sport for other reasons. Over £50 billion was invested in the sector between 2020 and 2025, with 28 new funds announced in 2025 bringing £7bn of fresh capital into sports.
Investment in sport is on the rise closer to home, with unprecedented outcomes. With a third of the football season to go, Hearts remain at the top of the Scottish Premiership. A closer look reveals the role that data and technology are playing in closing a historic performance gap with clubs who have traditionally topped the League.
Professor Ross Tuffee knows his way around the SportsTech sectorplaceholder image
Professor Ross Tuffee knows his way around the SportsTech sector
Funding doesn't just help teams recruit the best talent to bolster their performance, investment in technology accelerates post-injury return to play; engages fans on gameday and beyond; supports live decision making; helps manage events, incidents and venues; and eases the transition from professional athlete to a new role. Investment in the sports sector is not the whole story, however. Sport provides an access point to other industries which have potential to deliver huge impact, both economic and social, across Scotland. Solutions originating in performance improvement and injury prevention/recovery deliver benefits for health and wellbeing and, ultimately, longevity.
Fan engagement relies on constant, granular content creation, a capability applicable to any consumer-facing body. Sports also provides routes to market for technologies that support incident management, sadly relevant for any venue hosting large gatherings of people from sport to music, to shopping centres.
And what about the barriers to scaling these technologies? Investors want proven solutions and SportsTech founders therefore need test-beds where they can validate their prototypes and access data and athletes/users. Scotland hosts many international sporting events, from the Six Nations Rugby to The Commonwealth Games 2026 and The Tour de France 2027 (Grand Depart in Edinburgh and passing through The Borders). These, and future events, provide ideal testing grounds for technologies ranging from automated vehicles and drones to pay per view.
We even have access to “guaranteed surf” at Surf Lab, a joint venture between Edinburgh Napier University and Lost Shore Surf Resort in Edinburgh.
Our sporting universities operate at high levels when it comes to athletic performance, potentially providing access to athletes, teams and individuals as well as equipment that can be used for validating new products.
We need to increase the number of collisions between supply and demand – which is why we are creating MotionLab Ventures – “a living lab for sports innovation” – and why MotionLabs has teamed up with The Venture Cafe Edinburgh to run a series of SportsTech themed events through 2026.
Our shared ambition is to make Scotland the place where SportsTech founders and businesses come to develop, test and scale their technology.