Photon Sports

What Photon Sports does

Photon Sports is a Swedish sports technology company founded in 2016 by Jonas Sjöberg and based at the Uminova Innovation incubator in Umeå, Sweden. The company develops sensor-based technology designed to measure and analyze athletes' performance data, initially focused on football and now expanding into additional sports and fitness testing applications. Its core offering is a proprietary sensor platform that captures objective, data-driven performance metrics for use by coaches, teams, and athletes in training and competition contexts.

The company targets football teams and athletes as its primary use case, addressing the need for objective measurement tools to inform training and competition strategy. Beyond football, Photon Sports has stated an ambition to extend its sensor platform into the broader European sports market, leveraging new fitness tests and adjacent verticals. The company's revenue model is described as subscription/recurring, generating income from the sale of sensor technology and related performance measurement services. Pricing is not publicly disclosed, no customer logos are named, and no marketing or distribution channels have been articulated.

Photon Sports is privately held with 1-10 employees and has raised approximately 29 million SEK cumulatively across two funding rounds: a February 2021 round led by Partnerinvest Norr, Treac, and Unboxx (with Almi Invest participating), and a May 2022 round led by Pulsen Group, which also serves as a strategic partner. The company has not disclosed patents, awards, regulatory actions, or named AI/ML capabilities, and remains an early-stage commercial entity by disclosed indicators.

Name

Photon Sports

Legal name

Photon Sports

Website

https://photonsports.se

Company type

Private

Founded year

2016

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Photon Sports is a Swedish sports technology company that builds sensor-based performance measurement technology for athletes, initially serving football teams and expanding into broader European sports and fitness testing markets.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Sports Performance Analytics

NAICS

Sporting and Athletic Goods Manufacturing (33992)

SIC

Sporting & Athletic Goods, Nec (3949), Optical Instruments & Lenses (3827)

akta.pro primary industry

Performance Analysis & Video Coaching (HSADAEAG)

akta.pro secondary industry

Optical & Light Sensors (Photodiodes/ALS/Color/UV) (HDAHALAE)

Keywords

• Sports performance sensors
• Athletic analytics technology
• Fitness measurement systems
• Sports data analytics
• Wearable sports tech

Headquarters

HQ city

Skellefteå

HQ country

Sweden

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Hardware or Manufacturing

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Performance Measurement Technology: Photon Sports offers sensor-based technology solutions for measuring athlete performance. The company generates revenue through the sale of sensor technology and related performance measurement services to sports teams and athletes.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Core offering

Photon Sports develops sensor-based technology that measures athletes' performance metrics, initially focused on football with plans to expand to additional sports and fitness testing applications. The company sells this proprietary measurement technology to sports teams and athletes, enabling objective, data-driven insights for training and competition.

Product overview

Photon Sports offers a sports performance measurement technology using sensor technology to measure athletes' performance. The company initially focused on football and is expanding its market reach to additional sports while developing new fitness tests. The offering consists of their core sensor-based performance measurement platform and associated fitness assessment tools.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Sensor-based Athletic Performance Technology

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature1 record

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves4 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Catapult Sports: Catapult is the global leader in wearable athlete tracking, providing GPS- and sensor-based performance analytics to elite football and other sports teams. It is the most direct competitor to Photon Sports' sensor-based football performance measurement offering and the dominant incumbent in the category.
• STATSports: STATSports produces GPS-based athlete tracking hardware and software widely used by professional football clubs and federations across Europe. It directly overlaps with Photon Sports' football-focused sensor performance measurement product and target customer base.
• Kinexon: Kinexon provides real-time sensor-based tracking and analytics for athletes, with strong penetration in European basketball and football. Its sensor + analytics stack competes head-to-head with Photon Sports' proposition for performance measurement in team sports.
• Playermaker: Playermaker makes a sensor-equipped foot-tracking device worn inside football boots to capture per-foot performance data, used by elite academies and clubs. It is a direct competitor in the football-specific, sensor-based athlete performance category.
• Second Spectrum: Second Spectrum provides advanced video and sensor-based sports analytics, with major football and basketball league contracts. It is comparable to Photon Sports as a data-driven performance analytics vendor serving elite team sports organisations.

Broad incumbents

• Polar Electro: Polar is an established sports wearables and heart-rate sensing brand with broad consumer and team-sport reach. While it serves a wider audience than Photon Sports and is not focused exclusively on elite football analytics, its sensor-based performance measurement portfolio makes it a relevant adjacent incumbent.
• Whoop: Whoop provides subscription-based wearable performance and recovery analytics used by athletes across multiple sports. It competes for share-of-wallet with Photon Sports among teams and individual athletes investing in sensor-driven performance insights.

Emerging players

• PlayerData: PlayerData is an emerging UK-based sports tech firm offering GPS and sensor-based tracking for football and rugby clubs. It is a smaller, similarly staged emerging player pursuing overlapping customer segments to Photon Sports in European team sports.
• Track160: Track160 offers AI- and sensor-based football performance analytics, including tracking and event data for clubs and federations. It overlaps with Photon Sports' football analytics proposition as an emerging, similarly focused competitor.
• Hammerhead: Hammerhead (formerly Cycliq) and adjacent cycling-focused wearable analytics players share the broader sensor-based athlete performance measurement category with Photon Sports, offering comparable hardware-plus-software analytics stacks for individual and team sport performance.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds2 records

Investors5 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Photon Sports