Sport & Vitality

Sport can help specific business sectors to develop, depending on the characteristics of sport demand and supply in any country.

Sport & Vitality

Partnership's Vision statement
“The Sport & Vitality partnership (ClusSport) aims to support EU regions committed to generate a pipeline of business investment projects in the sport & vitality sector”

Partnership's Rationale statement
“Following a bottom-up approach - implemented through interregional cooperation, cluster participation and business involvement as well as aligning specialisation profiles of the partner regions”

Investing in the transition from healthcare to care for health

Sports has great societal benefits and play a key role in both physical and mental wellbeing. Sports and physical activity play an important role in preventing health problems and supporting recovery. Physical inactivity is the fourth leading risk factor for diseases and it is a challenge in all age groups. Covid-19 has once again clearly shown that working on a healthy active lifestyle is a key asset in the care for health for all ages and groups.  However, transferring to a healthier lifestyle is often easier said than done.

In addition, sport is identified as driver for economic growth. Sport & Vitality sectors have great potential and its links to other sectors such as tourism, health, and transport create new opportunities. New technologies and digital solutions play a key role in the future of Sport & Vitality and include unleashed potential.

By using the expertise of this Industrial modernisation partnership, we aim to find practises, that stimulate active lifestyle to turn healthcare to proactive care for health and to support growth and new work possibilities in the field of Sport & Vitality
 

Supporting Sport & Vitality on EU level

The Sport & Vitality partnership (ClusSport) aims to strengthen the Sport & Vitality industries at the EU level. All ClusSport regions aim at boosting sport and vitality sectors in their regional economies and on European level. The partnership also brings together a large variety of stakeholders from the sport sector and related industries. ClusSport is embedded in and actively supported by the European Platform for Sport Innovation (EPSI).
Read more in the ClusSport strategy, which can be found HERE.
 

A Network of Smart Innovation Hubs for Sport and Vitality

The ClusSport consortium is focusing on the development of smart regional innovation hubs for sports and vitality. These innovation hubs are local ecosystems that support the transfer of technology and knowledge for use into the society and the industry to fulfil the market need and have economical, societal and sports impact. The hubs include living lab structures in real life settings to test and validate concepts while generating data through smart environments and soft technology.

As the Cluster Manager for Sport and Technology, Rene Wijlens explains the Sport Innovation Hubs. This ClusSport’s investment idea consists of building local ecosystems, which will support the transfer of technology and knowledge in the sport sector.

Thematic working areas

ClusSport partners are developing joint activities in three thematic areas:
 
  • Smart Sport Wearables (quantified self) – ICT4Self
  • Smart Sport environment and IoT (quantified environment) – ICT4Env
  • Healthy active lifestyle – Sport4Vitality
 
    + Transversal projects

List of regions involved

Contact details of the leading regions

Lapland

Heikki HANNOLA

Lapland University of Applied Sciences, Principal Lecturer

South-Netherlands

Contact details of DG REGIO

Related documents

Monitoring reports containing a management report and a progress report prepared by the lead regions are available here:
Monitoring report Sport & Vitality July-December 2020
English
(308 KB - PDF)
Download 

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