402 companies, nearly two-thirds of which are start-ups and scale-ups: the first Swiss Sportstech Report, commissioned by Swiss Olympic, highlights the scale and structure of the sports technology sector in Switzerland. At the same time, it highlights the challenges that must be overcome if Switzerland is to realise its full potential in the field of sports technology.
The global sports economy is growing strongly. The World Economic Forum projects it to grow from approximately USD 2.3 trillion today to USD 8.8 trillion by 2050, with technology reshaping how sport is delivered, experienced and consumed, how sports business models evolve, and how top athletes train and perform.
Switzerland is well placed to capitalise on this opportunity. Switzerland’s strength in research is also evident in the field of sport: this is demonstrated by over 4,600 active sport-related patents.
At the same time, Switzerland is one of the world’s most important hubs for sport, home to around 60 international sports federations, including the IOC, FIFA and UEFA, and characterised by one of Europe’s highest levels of sports participation.
It is therefore no coincidence that Switzerland is home to global market leaders such as On and Sportradar. However, little has been known about the rest of the industry until now.
This is why Swiss Olympic, together with a broad alliance from sport, industry and economic development, initiated Switzerland’s first comprehensive sportstech study. Its purpose was to create visibility, identify key players and capabilities, and better understand how Switzerland can unlock the sector’s potential.
The key insights
- The mapping identified 402 companies across 26 cantons, generating an estimated CHF 8bn in revenue and employing approximately 17,000 FTE in Switzerland.
- Start-ups account for 34%, scale-ups for 28% of the surveyed population, SMEs for 34% and large enterprises for 3%. The sector appears concentrated in its early maturity stages, and most companies have yet to complete a first growth cycle.
- Around 10% of companies generate more than 90% of sector revenue, and several Swiss firms hold market-leading positions internationally. The broad base is commercially early-stage, with three quarters of surveyed companies earning less than CHF 1m in sport-related revenue and a fifth having no revenue yet.
- 43% of companies earn more than half of their sport-related revenue abroad, and the domestic market appears too small for most of these business models to reach scale on its own. Internationalised companies show stronger results, though this study cannot separate cause from selection.
- Observed transaction volume in the disclosed sample averages roughly USD 50m in total per year, below what comparable Swiss technology sectors attract. Swiss investors appear in the most deals by count but account for only about 12% of disclosed volume, and growth-stage capital comes predominantly from abroad. Taken together, the evidence points to uneven stage coverage, an accessible grant and seed layer alongside limited domestic scale-up capital. No dedicated sportstech fund exists in Switzerland.
- The sector’s centre of gravity is physical: equipment, apparel, materials and increasingly instrumented products, built on capability categories that recur across customer markets beyond sport. Part of the large-company layer consists of diversified industrial firms for which sport is one application among several.
A national sportstech organisation
In order to achieve stronger growth and establish a leading position on the international stage, the authors recommend exploring the possibility of establishing a national sports tech organisation. This organisation should systematically bring industry and sport together, improve networking amongst sports tech stakeholders, raise the sector’s international profile and give it a voice, and mobilise additional capital.
Definition and scope: A company is treated as sportstech where its solution was explicitly or primarily developed for sport, or deliberately adapted for a sport-related application. The test is a genuine sport-specific technological application; sport need not be the company’s only or principal market. For diversified companies, only the sport-related share of revenue is counted. Employment is counted only where it is both located in Switzerland and attributable to sportstech activity, and is expressed in full-time equivalents.
The report can be downloaded from the website of Swiss Olympic.
(Stefan Kyora)
