Sports tech company Mobii has been named Startup of the Year by The STA Group, a UK-based company that champions tech in sports around the world. 

This accolade includes a $50,000 prize in the form of advisory from Sightline Ventures, which will help Mobii on its quest to become the leading sports & broadcasting tech company worldwide.

The competition for the STA Group Startup of the Year consisted of a two-stage process; first, an evaluation of individual categories, and then a final head-to-head pitch among all category winners. Mobii won the Best Early Stage Startup category in the first stage and then participated in weeks of pitching sessions with a final panel of sports and technology experts. 

Judges from the first stage included Jeffrey Haas, Senior Vice President for International Strategy at DraftKings; Lorin Hamlin, Head of Innovation Partnerships at Under Armour; Melissa Lawton, Head of Sports Production at Facebook; and Michael Sutherland, Chief Transformation Officer of the Real Madrid soccer club. 

The final panel had two times Olympic Triathlon champion Alistair Brownlee, Michael Cole, CTO for the European Tour, and Rebecca Hopkins, founder and partner of Sightline Ventures, among its judges. They all chose Mobii as the winner for being the most innovative young technology business in the sports industry. The roster of competitors included other innovative early-stage and established companies from Canada, the U.S., and Switzerland.

The Startup awards by the STA Group have been celebrated every year since 2018. Previous contestants have come from 19 countries across 5 continents representing 37 sports. The competition looks for the best young companies in sports technology, evaluating entries based on a combination of their commercial proposition alongside the robustness of their company structure.