Press release: innovative SmartGoals launches Urban SkillCourt

Nieuw-Vennep, 30 August 2021 – W&H Sports, supplier of high-quality sports, fit-out and performance equipment, and its partner SmartGoals, an interactive training method, have launched the interactive sport and exercise concept Urban SkillCourt for public spaces. This permanent SmartGoals set-up can be configured entirely to your wishes and responds to trends such as gamification and digitalisation combined with sport.

SmartGoals was founded in 2015 and won the award for best sports innovation that same year. The company develops mobile sports frames with integrated LED lighting that train awareness, action speed, reaction time and the brain, among other things. Since then, the mobile sets have been supplied worldwide to football and hockey clubs, schools, physiotherapy practices and rehabilitation centres. This year, W&H Sports won the Sports Facilities Innovation Award with the SmartGoals Urban SkillCourt.

Winner of the Sportbedrijf Rotterdam Innovation Challenge

The first SmartGoals Urban SkillCourt came about when Sportbedrijf Rotterdam challenged start-ups at the end of 2019 to make sports pitches more interactive with innovative solutions. Together with YES!Delft, SmartGoals won the challenge with the Urban SkillCourt, resulting in a pilot project. The first permanent Urban SkillCourt now stands at the Olympia sports complex in IJsselmonde: a sports area for young and old, trained or untrained. The court is 40 metres long and 12 metres wide and has five zones for gaming (training) or testing, each with its own theme: technique, strength, performance, speed (running track) and gaming (fun). It has also been extended with the TURNBAR®, a multifunctional fitness station.

How the Urban SkillCourt works

What makes the Urban SkillCourt unique is the combination of exercise and gaming. An app challenges users to improve their performance and skills. After scanning a QR code once, you choose an exercise and start training. You can challenge yourself or others. Every user creates a profile showing their results. This game element helps you get the most out of yourself, challenge each other to move or simply train at your own level.

Ed van der Burg, Sportbedrijf Rotterdam: "With multifunctional, attractive and flexible sports facilities, including this SkillCourt, we want to get even more Rotterdam residents moving and keep them moving."

Sander de Goede, W&H Sports: "We are proud to have developed this concept for Sportbedrijf Rotterdam together with our partner SmartGoals. A sport and game concept for young and old that challenges you to move, individually and in a group."

Note to editors: for more information, contact W&H Sports on +31 (0) 252 683 300 or at info@whsports.nl.