The Barcelona Sports Hub positions the city globally with more than 500 partners

Sport is a hallmark of Barcelona, from the 92 Olympic Games and major competitions to grassroots sports, fitness, and running through its neighborhoods. In parallel, the city has become a benchmark in innovation in multiple fields, and also wants to position itself as a pillar in the area that hybridizes both sectors: technological innovation linked to sport.

It is in this context that the Barcelona Sports Hub emerged in 2023, with the aim of positioning the Catalan capital as a sport tech reference. Two years after its launch, it brings together more than 500 members, and not only from Barcelona, but from all over the world: "We are geographically agnostic, because sport has no borders," defends the director of the hub, Xavier Trallero.

Thus, the name Barcelona Sports Hub is not exclusive, but embraces global initiatives with the city's name as an element of attraction. "The idea is to be able to bring together as many projects as possible": the exactly 515 members include actors from markets as diverse as the United States, Singapore, Canada, and Hong Kong. In addition, it is aimed at the sport tech ecosystem, but also at other transversal areas linked to sport, such as health and nutrition.

The hub, which was born as a public-private initiative with the impulse of the Barcelona City Council, is also diverse in the type of entities and companies that comprise it, ranging from large technology companies to entrepreneurs, accelerators, experts, research groups, and startups.

In fact, emerging companies play a relevant role in the hub's ecosystem, accounting for 145 of the total. They are also characterized by variety, as there are startups in all phases of development and dedicated to multiple fields, such as projects that apply AI to padel, others focused on engagement with a sport or team, and others in virtual reality or software: "It's a very heterogeneous community." The hub is precisely responsible for facilitating interactions within this community, to generate synergies and build bridges between actors who would hardly meet without a network like the one woven by the Barcelona Sports Hub.

The members of the hub, whether large companies or small startups, celebrated the first partners' meeting a year ago, and then about 300 attended. Those affiliated with the hub have not stopped growing since its creation in 2023, although it began to take shape a couple of years earlier, in the parenthesis that the pandemic opened for reflection: various key actors in the city concluded that a sports city like Barcelona, which had grown propelled by the Olympic Games, and at the same time a technological city, "it made no sense that it didn't have a sports hub."

It was then that "the idea of this community that would bring together technology and sport began to be championed." This will led to the creation of the hub, which has the support of essential actors in the Barcelona sports ecosystem, such as the sports industry cluster of Catalonia, Indescat; Fira de Barcelona; the Institut Barcelona Esports; Barcelona Serveis Municipals; the Unió de Federacions Esportives de Catalunya (Ufec) and Barça, among many others.

After growing to half a thousand partners in less than two years, the hub now seeks to grow in structure, and also in space. Its plan to locate in the Estadi Olímpic was thwarted by administrative difficulties. Although it is linked to The Venue, the innovative community related to sport, music and events that precisely houses the Estadi Olímpic, the sport tech hub seeks to establish itself in its own space, and already has several options under study, always with one requirement: that it be a place "where sport is lived and breathed". All with one objective: to continue expanding the community and continue positioning Barcelona as an international benchmark in this field.