How Southampton use Sportlight as part of their 'start-up culture'

Southampton Performance Director Mark Bitcon says the club’s new owners, Sport Republic, are “trying to create a culture of being a start-up, where we move fast and are agile.”

A big part of this culture is to “be across new technology and data streams, because we don’t want to join the journey halfway through, we want to be there at the start.”

This is why the Championship club were early adopters of the Sportlight system, which combines LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology with Artificial Intelligence to provide hyper-accurate tracking and performance insights.

Sport Republic Vice Chairman Henrik Kraft was an early investor in the Oxfordshire-based company and now sits on its Board. Bitcon became aware of the technology before he joined Southampton last September, back when he was Director of Performance Services at Manchester City’s Academy from 2018 to 2022.

The main thing that attracted him to the technology was its accuracy.

“When you have a team of Sport Scientists and Physios, you are going back to that term accuracy again and again,” Bitcon tells TGG. “They want to know that the information they are getting is to a high level of accuracy, because they are making significant decisions on players with a high asset value. The accuracy this technology provides is second to none in this space.”

Sportlight say the product has "sub-millimetre accuracy", meaning it can focus on high-intensity and non-linear movements in a way that wearables or optical tracking can't. This enables "next-level data and insights", going deeper in key areas like acceleration, deceleration, change of direction and turn analysis.

In addition, AI-powered modules can spot "abnormal" movement patterns that can indicate fatigue and an increased risk of soft tissue injury. The convenience of the technology has also proved a big draw for Bitcon.

“Like a lot of clubs, we get inundated with proposals for wearable technology,” he says, "but this non-wearable space is really interesting and has significant advantages.

"The players can walk onto the pitch and be tracked to a high level of accuracy. It's all automated without any manual need to get everyone wired in with their unit."

Sportlight is installed at Southampton’s St Mary’s Stadium, as well as at 95% of Premier League grounds. This season the Saints have used the system at their Staplewood Training Ground as well.

“There are two sensors with lasers that cover the training pitch,” explains Wiganer Bitcon. "We push a button at the start of training and push a button at the end and the information gets sent automatically to the Sportlight system.

“We get reports within 10 minutes - so that by the time the guys are showered and back in the sport science room, we have that information. For matches, the reports come through within 30 minutes of the end of the game.”

Sportlight are working on a live solution to provide data and insights in-game and in-session. The reports include Match Physical Output scores (MPOs) and are intended to be quickly and easily understood by a range of staff.

“The reports are easy to understand for Medics, Sport Scientists, Data Scientists and also coaches and the ownership,” Bitcon says. “Everyone in football wants more data and it’s a currency thing now, but we are trying to make the complex simple and to have true impact on the performance programme.

"It’s my job to ensure we use a system like Sportlight effectively.”

Manager Russell Martin is among those to receive the reports and “appreciates this additional support and is interested in these areas of data and technology, which really helps."

“Standard” metrics, like high-speed distance and number of accelerations and decelerations are captured by Sportlight, but there are more advanced ones, like turn rate and change of direction.

Performance and Medical staff such as Head of Sport Science Tom Barnden and Head of Medical Steve Wright can log into the Sportlight portal to get more granular detail, while Bitcon goes in to compare data across the Sport Republic group. As well as Southampton, which they acquired in January 2022, Sport Republic also own Goztepe in Turkey and Valenciennes in France.

“We have Fraser McKinney (Rehab Lead) and Bill Styles (Sport Scientist), who have been with us for a number of years, and are top at that they do. They love the system, they are using it on a daily basis.

"The system tracks every movement on the pitch, so you are able to create an in-game profile with all of those turn metrics and supporting metrics and then track that in rehab.

"You are building someone up to try and hit those targets before they return to play. For all our injured players, we have data from the game and can directly compare that to their resilient return to training and playing based on the same system at the training ground.”

Sportlight is also used for talent development, pathway management and recruitment.

“It’s important to know what players can do within a position within a certain game model,” Bitcon explains. “Game model has become very important within the sport.

"We play differently across our three teams, but we have a ‘what it takes to win’ model for each. If we are looking at moving a player within the club, from Academy to first team, or within the wider group, then we can look at whether their physical profile fits a certain methodology.

“That might be in terms of how Russell wants to play at Southampton, in terms of physical metrics, or whether a player is moving from Southampton to Turkey and so on. Player profiling is massively important and Sportlight supports some of our decision-making in this area.”

With one game to go in England, Southampton are guaranteed of fourth place in the Championship, meaning they are set for the drama of the play-offs. Goztepe have been promoted to the Super Lig in Turkey, but Valenciennes have been relegated to the third tier in France.

Bitcon, who joined Sport Republic in September 2023 from the RFU, where he was Head of Athletic Performance and Innovation, says the group is only at the start of an "exciting journey."

“It’s been great to work with Henrik and Rasmus (Ankersen, the Co-Founder and CEO of Sport Republic) - they are inspirational and have a long-term plan and vision,” he says.

“I’ve been fortunate to work with some top people during my career and you have to learn but also lead. We have great teams of staff out on the ground at the three clubs and I’ve enjoyed working with them.

“I’m certainly not sat in my office in Southampton - I’m in France and Turkey a lot too. I’ve tried to be visible as well as strategic. It’s important for me to get out to quality-control but also to support those guys. We are happy with the start we have made and need to keep moving.”

With that in mind, he comes back to this idea of the group being a start-up: “The environment we have at Sport Republic is fast-paced, innovative and exciting."

As part of this, there has been a rebranding and refocusing of the Learning Lab, which was launched in April 2022 with the objective of allying with Universities and bringing the theoretical into an applied setting. Southampton part-funded three PhDs, on psychology, coaching and learning and virtual reality.

TGG went inside the Learning Lab in Episode #39 of the TGG Podcast in 2022. You can listen to the episode below. The Learning Lab is still being led by long-serving Head of Psychology Malcolm Frame, but is now reframed as the Learning and Innovation Lab. The change is significant and reflects changed priorities.

“Not everything is a three-year PhD,” Bitcon says. “Some things we need quick answers to, so we need a team that can move quickly too. 'Intent to impact' is one of the big mantras I try to push with my staff.

“Sometimes I need a two-week project that delivers a result that has an impact on next week’s game or answers a question overnight, so we need to move a bit faster in that innovation tech space.”

Sportlight has delivered short-term, while also having longer-term potential, he says.

"They’ve been great in terms of working with us on this journey and I think it’s got huge potential,” he says. “We feel we are at the start with this one and are excited to see what’s next.