How One Canadian Startup is Making Sleep the Next Big Thing in Professional Sports

September 17, 2013

If you’re a Vancouver Canucks fan you’ve likely heard of Fatigue Science.

Five years ago Vancouver Sun writer Iain MacIntyre wondered if Fatigue Science’s sleep bracelet was the Canucks “secret weapon”.

Hockey Night in Canada’s Elliotte Friedman followed up with a feature which included interviews on the technology with enforcer Darcy Hordichuk and GM Mike Gillis.

With Fatigue Science’s help, the Canucks were able to improve their road record dramatically and Gillis was able to convince the NHL to ease up on the Canucks historically unfair road schedule and travel requirements. But more important, the Canucks were able to secure exclusive rights to the sleep tracking technology for four years and have kept it off of other NHL teams’ wrists.

In the past five years wearable technology and the concept of “quantified self” has taken off. It’s clear that consumers want wearable devices to track activities and gather their own data.

And Silicon Valley is hot on this trend. Jawbone just raised $100 million but is still struggling to meet their client demands and Fitbit has raised over $43 million from hungry investors.

But is simply tracking your number of daily steps or hours of sleep enough to make any sort of significant change to you lifestyle and well-being? Apps and smart watches that simply report ”hours of sleep” are not enough to help consumers achieve their best, whether if be maximizing performance or cutting down reaction times.

Fatigue Science has the only technology in the world that can calculate how “hours of sleep” equate to “performance, reaction times and effectiveness.” And it looks like they are on two something with a growing client list that includes the Canadian Soccer Association, US Olympic Committee, Canadian Olympic Program, and the Australian National and Olympic Teams.

According to Fatigue Science CEO Sean Kerklaan, professional teams in the MLS and Premier League as well as the NBA and NFL are also testing the technology with announcements pending. Considering the game-changing affects that the Vancouver Canucks were able to experience in the first year of use, first-mover advantage in other leagues could be worth millions.

Kerklaan shared with Techvibes that Fatigue Science is “actively raising capital to scale their business to meet the demand for our technology and pursuing licensing partnerships to broaden the consumer reach of our algorithm so millions of people can benefit.”