The numbers paid to injured players across the world of sport are staggering.
Speaking on this week’s The Architects of Business, JOE’s new show in partnership with EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™, Stephen Smith has described the staggering amounts of money lost by the world’s biggest sports teams when they pay injured players.
Stephen Smith, was a Finalist in the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ in 2016. He is the Founder of Kitman Labs – a firm that designs software to help teams better manage their players’ health and fitness – started his career with Leinster before going on to found a company that has signed up teams from sports as diverse as rugby, soccer, baseball, American Football and lots more.
He tells host Tadhg Enright how the average NFL loses tens of millions of dollars per season to injured players and what he’s doing to reverse the trend.
(Listen from 12:14)
Stephen is also quick to defend players against the impression that they have ‘an easy life’.
“Coming from professional sport, people think that you do show up at 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning, people run outside, have a kickaround and then they go home and play PlayStation for the afternoon,” he says.
“I can tell you that it’s not like that at all and generally most of those guys are in at 6am in the morning and they’re not leaving until 6pm in the evening.
“They’re gone away travelling at the weekends; yeah, there’s a down day from training every week but all of the guys who aren’t playing, or all the guys who are injured, they’re in on those days.
“And then, ‘yeah, all the holidays are great, you get four or five weeks at the end of the year’? Well, all the guys who are injured and are trying to get their place back, they’re not going on holidays and they want to stay around. It’s hugely time consuming so I think, coming into the professional world having actually built up that base, in Leinster, made it a hell of a lot easier.”
The Architects of Business, brought to you in partnership with EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ , will be available every Monday morning on iTunes, Soundcloud and YouTube.
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