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2025-05-31-accounts

Podium Analytics (A company limited by guarantee)

ANNUAL REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 May 2025

A company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales, No. 11831773 A registered charity in England and Wales, No. 1183716, and Scotland, No. SC051893

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CONTENTS

Introduction

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A message from our Chairman 3 Financial Review 60
A message from our Chief Executive 7 Principal Risks and Uncertainties 62
Structure, Governance and Management 64
Trustees’ Report Statement of Trustees’ Responsibilities 67
(incorporating the Strategic Report)
Our Vision, Mission and Focus 10
Independent Auditor’s Report 68
Our Objectives 11
Our Journey so Far 14
Financial Statements
Programme Update for the period
Consolidated Statement
June 2024–May 2025
of Financial Activities 73
• The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine
and Technology at the University of Oxford 17 Balance Sheets 74
• Podium Analytics Applied Research 28
Consolidated Statement of Cash Flows 75
• Trusted Research Environment for Global Sport 45
• SportSmart Schools and Clubs Programme 49 Notes to the Accounts 76
• Advocacy and Awareness 54
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Reference and Administrative Details 93

Podium Analytics (A company limited by guarantee) ANNUAL REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

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For the year ended 31 May 2025
A company limited by guarantee,
registered in England and Wales, No. 11831773
A registered charity in England and Wales, No. 1183716,
and Scotland, No. SC051893
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READING THIS REPORT

Our 2024–2025 Annual Report has been created for digital viewing.

To move between sections, use the navigation panel that runs along the top of each page. You can also click to specific sections from this Contents page.

Podium Analytics Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024–2025

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A MESSAGE FROM OUR CHAIRMAN

Just over 5 years since our inception, 2025 was a natural reflection point for Podium.

We’ve come a long way since our official launch in September 2021 but our mission remains clear – to significantly reduce the incidence and impact of sports injury – and the science-led, data-driven principles upon which we were founded hold strong.

In the early part of the year, we took the opportunity to review our work and our impact over the past 6 years and to consider the landscape in which we’re operating, to both validate our current direction as well as identify opportunities to focus resources on. This has informed the development of a new 5-year strategy to 2030 with five key areas of focus, and I am immeasurably proud of the progress delivered over the 2024–25 period in each area.

1. Driving world-leading Research and Development

We remain steadfast in our commitment to fund and collaborate on leading-edge research, and the development of innovative technologies, to monitor, analyse and prevent sports injury.

By working closely with The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology at the University of Oxford, and other Research and Innovation Partners, we are spearheading the delivery of world-class evidence and innovative solutions to sports injury challenges at all levels of sport, with our ultimate impact focused on youth and grassroots.

part of several multimodal research studies that will seek to develop clinically quantifiable dose models for cumulative mild traumatic brain injury.

Two unparalleled systematic reviews have been submitted for peer review - the extensive, DCMS-endorsed project to produce the first nationwide report quantifying the incidence and economic burden of sport-related concussion, in addition to a review of the relationships between sports injury and mental health symptoms in young people aged 10-24-years-old with the study demonstrating a bi-directional correlation between mental health and sports injury for the very first time.

Continued on next page...

The third year of The Podium Institute’s operation brought exciting developments across a number of workstreams, in particular the further design of a truly world-first multimodal head injury study with Gloucester Rugby and Gloucester-Hartpury that (as of July 2025) is employing (effectively pitch side) a high-specification mobile MRI scanner to obtain acute neuroimaging of rugby players’ brains within three hours of a confirmed or suspected concussion event, as well as the launch of an innovative longitudinal study imaging adolescents presenting at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford with sport-related head injuries. These studies form

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I continue to be encouraged by the support and endorsement shown by the University of Oxford community to the Podium mission and the endeavours of the Institute, with the ongoing commitment of time, expertise and enthusiasm of the distinguished members of the Institute’s Steering Committee, chaired by Professor Dame Sarah Springman DBE FREng. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to the Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Irene Tracey CBE FRS FMedSci, who completed her term on the Steering Committee at the end of the 2024–25 period having provided invaluable direction and insight over these foundational years.

The Institute has continued to grow the number of outstanding student-athletes and next-generation sports safety leaders within the Doctoral Training Programme (19 from September 2025) – a unique legacy evident at the Institute’s inaugural Sports Medicine and Technology Conference in September 2024 that welcomed over 120 clinicians, researchers, technologists, engineers and sports medics from the UK and globally, and served as a testament to our cross-disciplinary approach to addressing the issue of sports injury.

As the team has been bolstered by key new faculty, there has been increasing focus on helmets and PPE, including wearable airbag protection systems, with major sports approaching the Institute to take on work in this domain, and the Institute’s strategy and roadmap in the area of long-term Brain Health has been developed in detail.

2. Scaling novel evidence into practice for real-world impact

The effective implementation and sustained adoption of sports injury prevention measures and protocols within grassroots sport is a significant challenge, and expertise in implementation science is increasingly valuable and necessary to accelerate discoveries into scalable, practical solutions.

This is a key area where Podium can and is building true leadership - in the development, promotion and adoption of evidence-based practices, interventions and policies in sports injury prevention – and I am proud of the expertise we continue to develop and deploy in this space to address the evidence-topractice gap.

A significant endorsement of our work, we have been approached to take on the Community Rugby Injury Surveillance and Prevention Project (CRISP), in partnership with the RFU and the University of Bath, whilst SportSmart continues to be embraced by Premiership Rugby, with Northampton Saints and Gloucester Rugby implementing the programme across their academies to monitor, manager and reduce the risk of injury.

Made possible by support from East Head Impact, we completed our Developing Child study with the University of Bath, resulting in a meaningful improvement in PE teachers’ knowledge and understanding of growth and maturation (with growth spurts being a factor uniquely

affecting 11–18-year-olds and a period that puts young people at increased risk of sports injury). Findings show compelling potential to tailor the programme toward community sport and scale for wider implementation.

Over the period, we made considerable progress in our partnership with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), focused on supporting the experience of young tennis players (10-14-years-old) across the LTA’s Regional Player Development Centres, and have completed a unique discovery project to assess the potential impact Podium could have in enhancing the experience of young people as they move through Talent, Performance and Academy Systems, consequently exposed to a heightened risk of injury.

Young Voices – our multi-component programme of research, co-design and intervention implementation to support young people’s mental health during sports injury – is progressing well, with a key study in collaboration with the University of Bath - exploring young people’s dynamic mental health though the injury course, including risk and protective factors for good mental health and long-term participation post-injury - near complete. The Young Voices programme continues to achieve very positive engagement and support from mental health partners and governing bodies of sport who recognise this critical gap in research and recovery support, and from the young people themselves who are impacted by injury.

We continue to benefit from the independent insight and unique expertise of our Expert Advisory Board, consisting of Chief Medical Officers from major sporting bodies and professional leagues together with subject matter experts from top medical and academic institutions, forming the Board for its second term during the period with 100% acceptance of all positions.

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3. Facilitating progress through open data and open science

Delivering more effective, safer use of athlete data is a key principle upon which Podium was founded. Working closely with the research and sport community, both nationally and internationally, we recognised the opportunity to truly accelerate sports injury research and solve a significant data challenge for Sports Governing Bodies and Professional Leagues by developing our Trusted Research Environment (TRE) for Global Sport.

The TRE represents a collective opportunity to realise the same impact in sports injury research that has been achieved in cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and other areas of medical science.

As an independent, not-for-profit that can operate across all sports organisations, our team is uniquely positioned to deliver this for the benefit of all sport, and we have made important progress over the 2024–25 period.

We convened a panel of global experts - appointed with the support of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) - to develop, and subsequently endorse, a Governance and Ethics Framework that ensures exemplary governance safeguards for the TRE.

As we continue to develop the TRE, founded on the needs of the global sports and researcher community, we have recently deployed it for use by The Podium Institute’s Cardiac Adaption project and are in advanced discussions with several International Federations and Sports Leagues who wish to embrace the opportunity to advance sports injury research.

4. Enabling direct beneficiary impact through SportSmart

From the outset, whilst we invested significantly in groundbreaking research founded on the highest level of evidence and quality of data gathered in professional and elite environments which can then translated for grassroots implementation, we wanted to ensure that we had a mechanism for engaging with our direct beneficiaries on the ground and start to plug the data gap which existed in youth and grassroots sport.

SportSmart enables coaches, teachers, sports medics, parents and players to track, share and manage injuries in one secure, free-to-use app. Crucially, it enables improved decisionmaking to reduce injury risk – real-time insight, informing real-time action.

Named a finalist in the 2025 Sports Technology Awards, we continue to focus on developing the programme and driving growth and sustained adoption of SportSmart across youth and grassroots sport, democratising access

to meaningful tools and resources for those delivering and participating at any level of sport.

Notably, we completed an extensive project, working closely with Professor James Calder, Chair of the Expert Drafting Group for the new UK Concussion Guidelines for Grassroots Sport, and an expert group of Chief Medical Officers of major sports to develop a new workflow and language for Graduated Return to Activity and Sport (GRAS) that could be implemented with any digital platform. This has been subsequently developed as a feature in our Head Injury Tool Suite within SportSmart. This SportSmart Concussion Recovery Tool, providing a step-by-step guide to returning to play following a concussion, is live as of September 2025.

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5. Advocating for evidence-based change

Our awareness and advocacy work has built steadily since our founding. Increasingly, we are turned to for input or contributions, both formally and informally, and we have seen the issue of youth and grassroots sports injury become higher up the priority agenda among key stakeholders.

We recognise the role we can play in promoting and achieving support for evidencebased practices, resources and policies within youth and grassroots sport – whether that’s working with Sports Governing Bodies to inform rule changes that better protect participants from sports injury or with the UK Government to create and publish policy.

Having made considerable progress in our collaboration with UK Government in the years leading up to the General Election in July 2024, we have had to focus our efforts over the 2024–25 period on engaging with the new Government to reestablish sports injury on the agenda.

Our 2024 Safety in Sport Perception Survey in collaboration with YouGov – an annual poll of UK public opinion - revealed that 73% of respondents believe that the NHS should record whether a head injury that receives medical attention was sustained during sport. With overwhelming support for urgent reform, Podium published the survey results calling on the Government to establish a National Sports Injury Database (a recommendation first made in 2002 by Dr Nick Webborn

CBE, a leading sports medicine specialist) to inform policy and better safeguard participants.

Our work to update the GRAS protocol mentioned above was approved by the DCMS Concussion Protocol Panel and, pending final approval by DCMS and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), is expected to be formally endorsed and published alongside the wider UK Concussion Guidance for Non-Elite (Grassroots) Sport.

Progress wouldn’t be possible without building and sustaining an active community of organisations and individuals participating in injury prevention, helping to spotlight the issue of sports injury and advocating for improved player welfare.

We have further engaged both National and International Governing Bodies and Professional Leagues regarding research collaborations and opportunities, and are making steady progress developing relationships with Sports Councils. We welcomed Paddle UK (formerly British Canoeing) alongside our existing collaborations with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), the Rugby Football Union (RFU), England Hockey, Hockey Wales, England Athletics, The Royal Ballet School, British Judo and England Ice Hockey.

We continue to develop our relationships across the Education community, have progressed our work in collaboration with the Association for Physical Education, with a focus on upskilling PE teachers in injury prevention, and continue to work with a number of schools across the country who are embracing SportSmart to streamline sports injury management, including those of the United Learning and Outwood Grange Academies Trust.

When we embarked on this journey, we knew that change would not happen overnight.

As we seek to continue to give The Podium Institute, our internal Research Team and our Academic Partners the runway needed to enable groundbreaking strides forward in sports medicine and technology, and thus fuel systematic change that will impact the health and wellbeing of generations, we must sustain the independence, integrity and long-term financial viability of the charity.

The ongoing and considerable support of our Founding Funders – the Dreamchasing Foundation, CVC Funds and CVC Foundation – continues to protect this runway, enabling us to meet the substantial financial commitment necessary to invest in our extensive research programme and, together with our remarkable Board of Trustees (to which we welcomed renowned Historian, Author and Educator, Sir Anthony Seldon, over the period) and the broader Podium Team, work to create a world with more sport and less injury.

I continue to be incredibly inspired by the steps we are taking, the positivity around our approach and by our close collaborations that have enabled us to make critical headway over the past year on our mission to reduce the incidence and impact of sports injury.

Sir Ron Dennis CBE Founder and Chairman

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A MESSAGE FROM OUR CEO

Nothing quite brings home the impact of injury than experiencing it for yourself.

After years of managing to evade serious sports injury, narrowly in some cases and luckily given my insatiable (some might say mad) appetite for sport, my summer kicked off with a multiple break of my clavicle and a bang to the head in a gravel cycling crash.

And, despite having lived and breathed the issue of sports injury for over 6 years at Podium, and in varied Sports Leadership roles for many years before that, being injured has been incredibly formative and has served as a valuable reminder of the importance of Podium’s work.

The toll of being inactive, in pain and less independent, and the impact of this on your mental health, cannot be underestimated. Working within sport, and sports injury specifically, I am acutely aware of how privileged it is to know who to turn to or where to go for credible, trustworthy advice, second opinions and and sometimes simply for reassurance - many don’t have this same privilege.

At the point of impact, I knew immediately that bone was broken. Although not a situation I wanted to be in, it was somewhat comforting to know that the damage could be clearly depicted on X-rays and Standard MRI, bones could be fixed, tried-and-tested rehabilitation plans could be followed and recovery timeframes in this case were, more or less, predictable.

Not knowing how a suspected concussion might manifest itself - that is a different feeling altogether.

I am therefore pleased to share that this summer marked three significant and exciting steps forward for Podium in the area of concussion.

The extensive, DCMS-endorsed project to produce the first nationwide report quantifying the incidence and economic burden of sport-related concussion across the United Kingdom has been submitted for peer review at a leading scientific journal. The key output of the study is the estimation of lower and upper bounds of the healthcare costs associated with sport-related head injury, by sport and for ages 11–15 and 16+, compared with the overall healthcare benefits arising from sport participation. (This is key to maintaining perspective - the substantial but addressable generational cost of concussion is far outweighed by the greater overall societal and healthcare benefits of sport participation.) The report will help to inform future government expenditure and policy on addressing sport-related head injury, and identifies data gaps by sport, gender and age, as well as the potential impact of the findings on NHS services moving forward.

Concurrently, The Podium Institute, together with Gloucester Rugby and Gloucester-Hartpury, launched a revolutionary multimodal study into concussion that is imaging players’ brains within a few hours of a suspected concussion, using advanced MRI techniques in a pitchside, high-specification mobile fMRI scanner – this has never been attempted before and will transform our understanding of the early phases of concussion and

the ability to detect concussive brain injury and predict outcomes. The scans will be complemented by video footage and acceleration data from existing instrumented mouthguards, blood and saliva biomarkers, all contributing to fully capture what happens at the precise moment a player experiences a concussion and replicated within an advanced modelling of the brain. This approach is replicable for other sports.

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Podium Analytics Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024–2025
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Meanwhile, we have launched our Concussion Recovery Tool, the latest feature in our SportSmart Head Injury suite, helping players, their parents and teachers/coaches become more informed in managing sports-related concussion and providing a step-by-step tool that guides users through a 21-day (minimum) return to play process. This development follows a substantial piece of work to determine a new workflow and language for Graduated Return to Activity and Sport (GRAS), working with Professor James Calder, Chair of the Expert Drafting Group for the new UK Concussion Guidelines, and an expert group of Chief Medical Officers of major sports, culminating in the development of an automated, digital GRAS tool to support the UK Concussion Guidelines for Grassroots Sport (published in April 2023). In addition, we created a ‘Guide to digitising the GRAS process’ to sit alongside the UK Concussion Guidelines to support other organisations who wish to develop GRAS into a digital platform.

These three projects illustrate the power of Podium’s strategy, and the actualisation of an end-to-end approach we’ve been mobilising since our founding.

A parallel track: we are intervening today with current best practice, whilst revolutionising for tomorrow.

Understanding the true scale of sports injury has been an important ambition from the start of Podium’s journey, and it’s critical to be able to quantify impact beyond simply recording incidence. Quantifying economic impact paints an important picture of societal and healthcare burden over the longer term and, for the first time, enables meaningful comparison to the impact of and investment in addressing other better-known issues, such as cancer or neurodegenerative diseases. The economic burden report shows us – in black and white terms - that concussion is an issue and there are cost savings that could be realised by the NHS with a change of Government policy.

However, this is an issue that can be mitigated and managed, all with the aim of getting players back to sport in a timely, safe manner.

At this moment, we can only manage the issue with what we already know, protecting participants as best we can and getting them back to sport, post-concussion, safely. The SportSmart Head Injury Tool and Concussion Recovery Tool puts in the hands of those delivering and playing sport the latest best practice approaches to identifying and managing concussion – in an accessible and scalable digital app.

Meanwhile, we work to better understand concussion and ultimately prevent it, through cutting edge science, research and innovation, enabled by considerable investment that allows for never-tried-before and truly game-changing approaches.

I am incredibly proud of the progress we have made over the year in concussion, brain injury and brain health as well as other pertinent areas, including mental health, adolescent growth and maturation, musculoskeletal trauma, helmets and PPE, and the athlete experience and injury prevention in pathway environments.

Sports injury is a big issue. And, it’s a shared issue. Alongside our partners and funders, we remain committed to reducing the incidence and impact of injury in youth and grassroots sport and welcome the support of others who share the same sense of responsibility and urgency for protecting the health and wellbeing of those playing sport. And, to anyone wondering, I’m back on my bike.

Andy Hunt Chief Executive

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TRUSTEES’ REPORT

(Incorporating the Strategic Report)

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OUR VISION, MISSION AND FOCUS

Our Vision: More sport, less injury

Our Mission: To significantly reduce the incidence and impact of sports injury

Our Approach: Science-led, data-driven

Our Focus: Youth and grassroots sport

of sports-related A&E visits are in the under 19s

47.4%

young people a week die of Sudden Cardiac Death in the UK. They are nearly all exercising at the time.

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1 in 4

young people have mental health challenges: competition, yearround training, injury and dropout can intensify adolescent psychological vulnerabilities

emergency department visits each year are due to sports injury

1m

In a systematic review of 221k adolescents engaging in sport, there is clear evidence of a bidirectional relationship between mental health and sports injuries.

Estimated economic burden of concussion alone is expected to be £millions

34%

of people who have had an injury are still affected by that injury

per year.

Sports-related concussion is most pronounced in 5-24-yearolds, with a long-established link between traumatic brain injury in contact sport and neurodegenerative disease.

Pre-existing mental health and wellbeing problems are associated with an increased risk of injury incidence and severity.

Podium Analytics Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024–2025

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OUR OBJECTIVES

Our charitable objects are to advance health for the public benefit, in particular but not exclusively by collecting, researching (including the publication of the useful results of such charitable research) and applying data to support the prevention and treatment of injuries in sport, particularly but not exclusively, youth and grassroots sport.

How we deliver our work

The work we do to address the problem of youth and grassroots sports injury and its impact is delivered through the following key areas:

BUILD A DRIVE CLEAR PIONEERING PICTURE RESEARCH

We fund, deliver and collaborate on leading-edge research and development in injury prevention and management.

We gather insight into the sports injury landscape to identify and understand key issues in youth and grassroots sport.

ACCELERATE GLOBAL LEARNINGS

We facilitate open data and science in the field of sports injury, revolutionising how global sport works with player data.

DESIGN FOR IMPACT

We design and deliver accessible injury prevention and management tools, training and resources for participants,

teachers, coaches and families.

CONNECT THE PARTS

We engage, involve and bring together an active community of organisations and individuals to drive a unified, resilient and participantcentred approach.

ADVOCATE FOR CHANGE

IMPROVE STANDARDS

We raise awareness We advise on of the impact improved standards of sports injury, that enhance and promote and training, education, achieve support sports equipment for evidence-based and apparel. practices, resources and policies.

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Sports injury is recognised as an issue that impacts public health.

The culture of sport supports and prioritises both the physical and mental health of participants.

High-quality evidence drives the creation of best practice in sports injury prevention and management.

Sport, Health and Education Bodies implement evidence-based policy and practice to prevent and manage sports injury.

Individuals can take informed and effective action to improve resilience and better prevent and manage sports injury.

There is a coordinated and collaborative approach to sports injury prevention and recovery.

Equipment and apparel are demonstrably effective at preventing or reducing the impact of sports injury. OUTCOMES

THE LONG-TERM IMPACT WE’RE AIMING FOR:

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OUR OBJECTIVES FOR 2025–2030

Drive world-leading research and the development of innovative technologies to monitor, analyse and prevent sports injury.

Read about our leading-edge research with The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology at the University of Oxford

Develop the Trusted Research Environment for Global Sport and start to establish it as a leading choice for research in sports injury.

Read about the latest developments of the Trusted Research Environment

Establish Podium as trusted leader in the development, promotion and adoption of evidence-based practices, interventions and policies in sports injury prevention.

Find out more about our exceptional in-house Implementation Research Team

Develop the SportSmart programme, driving sustained adoption and engagement across youth and grassroots sport.

Find out how our SportSmart Schools and Clubs programme is delivering value on the ground

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DEC 2021

SEP 2021

OUR JOURNEY SO FAR

Registered in 2019, Podium Analytics is a charity, founded to create a world with more sport and less injury.

NOV 2022

Podium and Centre for Mental Health launch research project into sport, injury and youth mental health

Tim Henman OBE, former British professional tennis player, joins as Ambassador

Debbie Jevans CBE joins as Special Advisor for Sport

Podium officially launches at 10 Downing Street, and announces establishment of The Podium Analytics Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology at the University of Oxford

Donald Mackenzie, Co-Founder and Co-Chair of CVC Capital Partners, joins as Trustee

Podium receives formal endorsements from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Education

UK Government’s Sports Minister endorses the Podium Institute's first project: a systematic review of the incidence and economic burden of sport-related concussion in the UK

Podium partners with the RFU, England Hockey and the David Ross Education Trust

SportSmart is live in schools

MAY 2022

SportSmart Head Injury Tool based on Concussion Recognition Tool (CRT5) launches

OCT 2022

Results of inaugural Safety in Sport Perception Survey published

FEB 2023

MAR 2022

Podium partners with Gloucester Rugby and England Athletics

Former England Women’s Hockey Captain, Alex Danson-Bennett MBE, and Beth Tweddle, Britain’s most successful female gymnast, join as Ambassadors

APR 2022

Research Strategy Advisory Board launches

Sam Ward, Great Britain Hockey player and Olympic medallist, joins as Ambassador

MAY 2022

Inaugural Safety in Sport Perception Survey launches, in collaboration with YouGov

Podium’s Mental Health Strategy published

DEC 2022

Podium partners with the Lawn Tennis Association

JAN 2023

Amy Williams MBE, British Olympic Gold Medallist, joins as Ambassador

Podium launches research project with the University of Bath to understand and manage growth spurt challenges in youth sport

MAR 2023

Podium partners with The Royal Ballet School

MAY 2023

Podium partners with Pinsent Masons

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SEP 2023

Podium partners with Google to build Proof of Concept Trusted Research Environment

JUN 2023

Injuries, Insults and Applause, the results of Podium and Centre for Mental Health’s project, is published

UK Government endorses two-year national trial of SportSmart Head Injury Tool to monitor concussion in grassroots sport

OCT 2023

NOV 2023 Safety in Sport Perception Survey 2023 results published Podium partners with Return2Play Premiership Rugby Academy programme kicks off at Gloucester Rugby Our first university – Chichester – signs up for SportSmart

Podium partners with United Learning Steven McRae, Principal Dancer at The Royal Ballet, joins as Ambassador MySportSmart launches

DEC 2023 Podium partners with British Judo

JAN 2024 MAR 2024 FEB 2024 The Podium Institute celebrates official Podium partners with SportSmart shortlisted opening England Ice Hockey and in The 2024 Sports St. Mirren Football Club Technology Awards Podium partners with The Rugby Players Association

Podium partners with Canada’s Complete Concussion Management (CCMI)

SportSmart Resource Hub launches

REPORTING PERIOD JUNE 2023–MAY 2024

APR 2024

MAY 2024

Podium announces Trusted Podium partners Research Environment for with Hockey Wales Global Sport Podium achieves ISO/IEC Graduated Return to Activity 27001:2022 Certification

Graduated Return to Activity and Sport project launches

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DEC 2024

Podium confirms new Expert Advisory Board members for the advisory group’s second term

MAR 2025

Podium named Finalist in Not-for-Profit category in the British Data Awards 2025

JAN 2025

Sir Anthony Seldon joins the Podium Analytics Board First patients scanned in a revolutionary Podium Institute study investigating traumatic brain injury in adolescents

FEB 2025

SportSmart named finalist in the 2025 Sports Technology Awards

The Podium Institute publishes Systematic Review ‘Performance of current tools used for on-the-day assessment and diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury in sport’

MAY 2025

Podium passes ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Audit

OCT 2024

NOV 2024

Podium launches research project ‘Young Voices in Sport’ with the University of Bath to explore mental health of young people experiencing sporting injuries

Safety in Sport Perception Survey 2024 results published

Podium receives highly commended at UK IT Industry Awards for Charity Project of the Year and Security Professional of the Year

JUN 2024

Podium partners with Northampton Saints

REPORTING PERIOD JUNE 2024–MAY 2025

SEP 2024

The Podium Institute hosts inaugural Sports Medicine and Technology Conference

The Developing Child educational course launches to pilot group of PE Teachers

The SportSmart Adaptation Model launches

The Podium Institute submits systematic review of ‘relationships between sports injury and mental health symptoms in young people aged 10–24-years-old’ for peer review

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The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology

Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

THE PODIUM INSTITUTE FOR SPORTS MEDICINE AND TECHNOLOGY Science-driven sports medicine and technology for lifelong health

KEY AIMS

Produce world-leading science to inspire and forge evidence-based changes in safety regulation and policy across sport.

Develop innovative technologies to monitor, analyse and prevent sports injury and drive their adoption.

Devise, validate and encourage the adoption of robust safety performance standards for sport equipment.

INITIAL FOCUS

The Podium Institute has an initial focus on traumatic injuries including head injury and serious musculoskeletal injuries, as well as sudden cardiac death and mental health.

STEERING COMMITTEE

Members for the Period June 2024–May 2025

Sir Ron Dennis

Professor Dame Sarah Springman DBE FREng (Chair)

CBE, Founder and Chairman, Podium Analytics

Professor Irene Tracey

Peter Hamlyn

CBE FRS FMedSci, Vice Chancellor, University of Oxford

Trustee and Medical Director, Podium Analytics

Professor Constantin Coussios

Andy Hunt

OBE FREng, Director of the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Director of The Podium Institute, University of Oxford

CEO, Podium Analytics

Professor Heidi Johansen-Berg

FMedSci, Associate Head of Medical Sciences (Research), University of Oxford

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The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology

Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

The 2024–2025 period marked the third full year of the Podium Institute at the University of Oxford in operation and included a number of extraordinary additions to the team.

With the recruitment of the third Associate Professor, Prof. Johannes Weickenmeier, from the Stevens Institute in New Jersey, USA, the Institute’s research strategy and roadmap in the area of long-term Brain Health has been developed in more detail. Johannes’s area of expertise is the design of multiphysics computational models capable of predicting the evolution of brain health over several decades. His group aims to understand the most prevalent damage mechanisms associated with sport-related traumatic brain injury, with the goal to facilitate early diagnosis of abnormal brain changes and be able to predict and ideally prevent the development of neurodegenerative disease.

In short, Prof. Weickenmeier’s research is intended to bridge the gap in our understanding between the occurrence and severity of head impacts during athletes’ active years, and how these potentially link to changes in brain health later in life.

Johannes joins Professor Mauricio Villarroel (Associate Professor in Technologies for Sports Medicine) and Professor Liang He (Associate Professor in AI for Sports Medicine). These permanent academic roles support the founding Institute Director, Professor Constantin Coussios OBE FREng FMedSci, in driving the key research themes across the Institute, collaborating across the University disciplines in an open innovation environment, and leading the growing postdoctoral researcher, clinical research fellow and doctoral student team.

The recruitment process for the remaining tenure-track Associate Professor role has recently been completed and will be announced in Q4 2025.

There is increasing focus on helmets and PPE, including wearable airbag protection systems (equestrian, ski and snowboard, cycling). Major sports continue to approach the Institute to take on work in this domain, and the team has been bolstered by the onboarding of Dr Ryman Hashem as a

Senior Research Fellow, who is leading on groundbreaking research into medical and wearable robotics.

Ryman brings a wealth of experience, including pioneering the development of a biologically inspired soft robotic stomach simulator that mimics human gastric motility—a tool that has significantly advanced surgical training and medical research.

His expertise extends beyond soft robotics and surgical applications to include wearable technologies designed for injury rehabilitation and real-time health monitoring, and his innovative approach promises to integrate soft robotic principles with wearable systems, opening up possibilities for developing adaptive, responsive devices that can enhance both clinical and everyday health management.

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The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology

Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR TEAM

Prof. Mauricio Villarroel Associate Professor in Technologies for Sports Medicine (Magdalen College)

With extensive expertise in wearable and implantable medical devices as well as video-based contactless assessment of biomedical parameters, Prof. Villarroel leads the Cardiac Health theme of the Podium Institute. His particular focus is the identification and prevention of early risk factors that could result in sport-related sudden cardiac arrest, as well as the validation of biomarkers from blood, saliva and wearables that can help characterise an athlete’s level of exertion to optimise safe training regimens and ensure safe return to sport following an injury.

Prof. Liang He Associate Professor in AI for Sports Medicine (Kellogg College)

Prof. He leads the Musculoskeletal Health theme of the Podium Institute. His extensive expertise in the general area of soft robotics and machine learning is being brought to bear to develop innovative intelligent wearables and exoskeletons that can help prevent, diagnose or aid in the recovery from musculoskeletal injuries such as ACL tears, and to develop novel intelligent personal protective equipment technologies that are effective and validated in their ability to prevent concussion and serious musculoskeletal injuries.

Prof. Johannes Weickenmeier Associate Professor

in Technologies for Brain Health (St Cross College)

Prof. Weickenmeier

co-leads the Brain Health theme of the Podium Institute alongside Prof. Coussios, focusing on sportrelated head impacts and the acute, chronic and lifelong consequences of brain injury.

To be announced soon... Associate Professor in Technology for Mental Health (St Catherine’s College)

The scope of this fourth faculty position is to uncover potential links between mental health and sport injury, focusing on the development of quantitative techniques that make it possible to objectively characterise state of mind, pain, sleep and cognition by analysing recordings of gait, computer vision applied to facial expressions, general motion patterns, vital sign monitoring and structural and functional neuroimaging.

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The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology

Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

MULTIMODAL HEAD INJURY STUDY WITH GLOUCESTER RUGBY

“While conventional CT and MRI scans often appear unremarkable following a concussion, advanced MRI techniques have shown early promise in detecting concussive brain injury - and could potentially aid in diagnosis and predicting long-term outcomes. However, logistical constraints—such as most MRI scanners being in hospitals and research institutions—have restricted previous research to scans taken several days after the injury, and imaging within a few hours after concussion has never been attempted. Therefore, our current understanding of the early phases of concussion is severely limited. Knowledge about this phase is essential for developing more accurate, low-cost and scalable diagnostic tools, and to better understand potential areas for prevention, early intervention and rehabilitation. We are grateful to Gloucester Rugby for their commitment to player welfare, and to the players for their consent to undertake this study, which we hope will be helpful in aiding existing safety measures.”

Professor Constantin Coussios OBE FREng FMedSci Study Lead and Director of The Podium Institute

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Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology

NEUROIMAGING STUDY OF SPORT-RELATED TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY IN ADOLESCENTS

A world-first study focused on sportrelated head injuries in 11–18-yearolds, in partnership with Oxford University Hospitals (OUH), has commenced and recruited and scanned its first participants.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and long-term disability in young people. However, research in this area remains limited in particular due to a lack of data concerning head injuries sustained by the young population, and conventional assessment methods have proven inadequate for accurately diagnosing and analysing brain injuries. In emergency departments, clinical assessments such as computerised tomography (CT) scans focus on detecting life-threatening injuries. However, many children with a normal-looking CT scan still experience lasting symptoms, highlighting that important aspects of brain injury may be missed on standard imaging.

This innovative longitudinal study is harnessing advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques

to uncover why some children recover worse than others after they have sustained a head injury.

The study will image all adolescents who present at the John Radcliffe Hospital with a sport-related head injury, and explore various aspects of brain damage, including injury to nerve fibres, disruptions in brain metabolism, and changes in functional connectivity between brain regions. Using cuttingedge neuroimaging techniques, combined with cognitive testing and self- and parent-reported information on head injuries, the aim is to identify key MRI biomarkers that can reliably predict both clinical recovery and sports-related outcomes, such as time to return to sport.

Over the next 2 years, the study

hopes to scan a total of 120 patients who are 11-18-years of age and regularly take part in sports. This will include young people with both recent and past sport-related head injuries, young people with older head injuries, and healthy controls.

“Ten months into the study, recruitment has been going exceptionally well, and we have been able to recruit about one third of our cohort. Preliminary analysis of existing data from traumatic brain injury patients compared to healthy controls has enabled us to glean that a magnetic resonance imaging technique, known as white matter tractometry, can help us identify patients at risk of poor longerterm outcomes as early as a few days following head injury.

It is still early days and further data and analysis are required, but such neuroimaging techniques could in the future play a key role in the early identification of athletes that require more intensive postinjury management and follow-up to ensure safe return-to-play.”

Izabelle Lovgren, The Podium Institute doctoral student leading the study

MULTIMODAL STUDY IN SKI AND SNOWBOARD

A further multimodal study has commenced in collaboration with GB Snowsport. The study will deploy for the first time a type of instrumented mouthguard capable of continuous rather than event-triggered data acquisition, which will make it possible to monitor all phases of injury from initial fall to the last impact. A particular challenge is the ability to acquire this data robustly at very low temperatures and high altitudes.

The aim of the study is to characterise the linear and rotational accelerations that occur during head impacts using a combination of instrumented mouthguard and video data, in order to enable the development of improved helmets and other protective equipment specifically designed to mitigate head injury in skiing and snowboarding.

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The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology

Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW PUBLISHED: PERFORMANCE OF CURRENT TOOLS USED FOR ON-THE-DAY ASSESSMENT AND DIAGNOSIS OF MILD TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY IN SPORT

The primary goal of the review was to evaluate the performance of monitoring tools used within 24 hours of injury, and to determine whether the current techniques are fit for purpose, provide recommendations for their improvement, and highlight areas requiring further development.

A comprehensive systematic review, comparing the current tools used for on-the-day assessment and diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury in sport, was published in the British Medical Journal Open Sports and Exercise Medicine in early 2025, marking a significant step in the development of future best practices for evaluating head impacts in athletes, particularly highlighting the need for a ‘gold standard’ for the assessment and diagnosis of this widespread type of injury in athletes.

2,534 unique records were evaluated and over 50 reports analysed, uncovering several interesting findings. Notably, 90% of reports lacked precise documentation of the time between the measurement and the injury. This is a significant limitation, as sport-related brain injuries and their symptoms evolve over time, making accurate and timely reporting of head impacts essential. The performance of assessment methods varied considerably, with accuracy-related metrics being the most commonly utilised. While multi-modal assessments are considered optimal, they can be resourceintensive and do not necessarily enhance our understanding of sports-related mTBI. Additionally, female athletes remain generally underrepresented in the available literature.

Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI), often referred to as concussion, is a closed head injury, which results from a direct blow to the head or rapid acceleration/deceleration, potentially causing temporary loss of consciousness, confusion, disorientation, and amnesia, among other short- and long-term symptoms[1] . In the UK, mTBI is a significant health concern. Each year, over 1 million individuals attend emergency departments in England and Wales due to recent head injuries. Of these, approximately 68% are classified as mild TBIs.[2]

“Paradoxically, the more we know about traumatic brain injury, the clearer it is that one unique definition doesn’t apply for the wide range of symptoms, injuries, and time scales involved. To this end, many teams and federations have embraced a variety of metrics or tools to assess the risk of injury on-the-fly or immediately after a given head impact. In this systematic review, we summarise the existing monitoring tools used for the on-the-day diagnosis of sport-related mTBI.

This effort poses the basis for the establishment of the best possible metrics and aims to identify where more efforts could be done”

Professor Antoine Jerusalem MSc PhD, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Corresponding author and Podium Institute Affiliated Faculty

1www.sciencedirect.com 2www.nice.org.uk/guidance/

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The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology

Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

IMPROVING HELMET SAFETY

Work into the development of new materials and testing methods specifically aimed at improving helmet safety and performance in the context of mild traumatic brain injury is well underway.

The majority of helmets as designed today are specifically aimed at preventing skull fracture, but are sub-optimal in terms of reducing the transmission of linear and rotational forces to the brain that are being increasingly linked to concussion and its downstream consequences. The research seeks to develop novel lowcost materials specifically designed to absorb both linear and rotational energy effectively, and to adequately take into account the presence of the neck in designing and testing current and nextgeneration helmets.

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF MENTAL HEALTH AND SPORTS INJURY ASSOCIATION COMPLETED

At the end of 2024, the systematic review of relationships between sports injury and mental health symptoms in young people aged 10–24-years-old was submitted to Sports Medicine for peer review and accepted in principle, subject to minor revisions which are currently awaiting final assessment.

The review critically appraises and synthesises previous research studies, from across all sports and within both elite and grassroots settings, to provide a summary of current best evidence. It evaluates the mechanisms that link mental health symptoms with injury, and injury with mental health symptoms, demonstrating a bi-directional correlation between mental health and sports injury for the very first time. Findings identify gaps in knowledge and suggest future areas of research, including intervention studies.

“Humans are systems – Mental Health is therefore integral to studying injury, not only in terms of optimising athletes’ recovery, but also potentially to help prevent serious injuries in the first place.”

Professor Lucy Bowes, Professor of Experimental Psychology, Study Lead

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The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology

DOCTORAL TRAINING PROGRAMME

The Podium Institute has continued to grow the number of outstanding student-athletes and next-generation sports safety leader within the Doctoral Training Programme, with 12 students over the 2024–25 period.

The latest recruitment round of DPhil students has been confirmed for the 2025–26 Academic Year, which will raise the total number of students at the Institute to 19.

Ongoing projects include:

New for 2024–25:

Computational Digital Twin Modelling for Impact Reconstruction and Traumatic Brain Injury in Sports

Research into head trauma often overlooks the significance of the upper-body and neck biomechanics due to the complexities involved in modelling the active muscular response to an anticipated impact. The aim of this project is to develop Physical and Digital Twins to introduce active musculoskeletal dynamics to computational modelling of impacts in contact sports.

New for 2024–25:

Preventing Anterior-Cruciate-Ligament (ACL) knee injuries

Developing a sensor framework and measuring detailed knee kinematics, using together with biomechanical modelling, to compute the ACL

injury risks of the tracked movement patterns during sports, increasing the athlete’s awareness of ACL (a type of injury particularly affecting youth athletes and often occurring via noncontact means) injury risks through real-time, personalised sensor feedback. To develop the sensor framework, initial work focuses on developing printing-based fabrication methods to create the soft and stretchable sensor array suitable for this task.

New for 2024–25:

Preventing musculoskeletal injuries in youth and elite athletes

Developing a screening protocol to identify early-stage cam morphology in adolescent sports people, utilising novel imaging technologies to non-invasively understand hip joint kinematics and avoid skin tissue artifacts which are often seen in larger 3D motion capture systems.

Continued on next page...

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Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

New for 2024–25:

Neuroimaging markers of sports-related concussion (part of multi-modal

Gloucester Rugby project)

Scanning rugby players before and after receiving a concussion using MRI, and combining neuroimaging with various other measures such as blood, saliva and wearable mouthguard data, to better understand the pathophysiology of concussion, as well as improve the assessment and diagnosis of sports-related concussion.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Study in Young People with Traumatic Brain Injury (part of neuroimaging head injury study in adolescents)

Using a multimodal MRI approach to better understand the pathophysiology and evolution of traumatic brain injury in young people, to identify imaging findings (and other factors such as injury mechanism) that can help better predict how well a child will recover after a head injury, ultimately, enabling the identification of children who have had a worse injury than indicated using the current conventional clinical assessment tools.

Cardiac electrophysiological modelling to predict Sudden Cardiac Death in youth athletes

Exploring the underlying causes and mechanisms of sudden cardiac death in adolescents through researching agedependent sex-hormonal-driven cardiac electrophysiological changes in boys and girls during cardiovascular stress and how they relate to cardiorespiratory fitness, an indicative measure for sudden cardiac death.

Motor coordination as

a predictor of injury

Collecting acceleration, orientation, and gyroscopic data from contact sport volunteer athletes, and processing data using clustering algorithms to identify when coordinated plays occur between opponents and teammates, and this will be assessed alongside injury rates.

Predicting sports-related traumatic brain injury

A coupled experimental-numerical framework for the prediction of sports-related traumatic brain injury, and the creation of a library of Finite Element simulations to allow the estimation of internal mechanical metrics for brain injury as an input to a machine learning algorithm to predict traumatic brain injury.

Applications of Computer Vision to Monitoring and Predicting Sport-Related Injury

Injury monitoring and prevention in youth gymnastics

With a focus on the upper limb, characterise the associated motion and loading using video analysis and inertial sensing technologies, for a better understanding of the injury mechanisms so preventative measures can be put in place.

Analysing impacts in sports videos, using computer vision techniques to track players movements and predict dangerous collisions, including developing human pose estimation and 3D reconstruction models for dynamic multi-person scenes, and jointly modelling the scene reconstruction with the body biomechanics.

Virtual reality technology to prevent non-acute injuries

Exploring existing control models for human motion control and learning, assessing how VR can overcome their limitations as a guidance tool and conducting specific research on select wrist motions to evaluate the effectiveness of integrating VR with these control models and their applicability in real-world scenarios.

Overuse injuries in volleyball

The development of biomarkers that lead to overuse injuries in volleyball, observing different parameters (biomarkers, external load, and lifestyle) and investigating their effect on players.

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The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology

INAUGURAL INSTITUTE CONFERENCE

In September 2024, The Podium Institute hosted its inaugural Sports Medicine and Technology Conference.

This event celebrated the three-year anniversary of the official launch of Podium Analytics and announcement of the establishment of the Institute at the University of Oxford, therefore marking a significant step forward in the evolution of sports medicine and technology.

The conference served as a testament to our cross-disciplinary approach in addressing the issue of sports injury. Clinicians, researchers, technologists, engineers, and sports medics gathered to share their insights and expertise, alongside our Doctoral Training students - many of whom bring their own experiences as athletes to the forefront of sports science and medicine.

The venue, the Richard Doll Building at the University of Oxford, was particularly symbolic. Richard Doll, widely regarded as one of the world’s most distinguished epidemiologists, transformed our understanding of public health by proving

the link between smoking and serious diseases. Hosting our discussions in such a revered space underscored the importance of our work and the potential impact we can have on public health through sports.

Through keynotes, contributed talks, and panel discussions, we balanced current research findings with lessons learned from outside of sport. Notable highlights included presentations from Professor Andrew Zisserman, who showcased groundbreaking computer vision tools for injury detection, and Professor Lee Goldstein, who provided compelling insights into the mechanisms behind concussions and traumatic brain injuries.

The next edition of the conference is planned for 25–26 September 2025.

“Three years on, I couldn’t be prouder of The Podium Institute and the journey we’ve undertaken. During the two days of deep discussion, we tackled the often-overlooked issue of sports injury in youth and grassroots sports. This is an area that demands attention, as the burden of injury is far-reaching yet remains poorly understood. The ambition to address injury was palpable, to understand causality rather than merely correlation, and a strong consensus on the necessity for injury surveillance as a fundamental duty of care.”

Andy Hunt, CEO, Podium Analytics

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The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology

PRIORITIES FOR THE 2025–2026 PERIOD

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APPLIED RESEARCH

A targeted research approach driving real-world impact by translating academic research into actionable on-the-ground solutions for schools and grassroots club environments.

Our expert in-house Research Team conduct focused research and innovation programmes in partnership with schools, clubs, and other communities. Insights are gathered from, and programmes of work are often co-created with, young people, parents, teachers and coaches to ensure they are applicable and sustainable in practice.

Applied Research

EXPERT ADVISORY BOARD (EAB)

We continue to benefit from the independent insight and expertise of our EAB:

Chair:

Ed Fletcher

Dr. Rod Jaques OBE FFSEM(UK) FRCP

Founder, Barron Fletcher Consulting; Founder of Fletchers Solicitors (UK’s largest dedicated catastrophic injury law firm)

Consultant in Sport and Exercise Medicine; Former Director of Medical Services, English Institute of Sport

Michael Bourne

Vice Chair: Mr. Peter Hamlyn MB BS BSC MD FRCS FISM

Performance Director, Lawn Tennis Association

Prof. Mark Batt BSc MB BChir DM FRCP FFSEM

Consultant Neurosurgeon and Specialist in Sport and Exercise Medicine

Consultant in Sport and Exercise Medicine

Dr. Charlotte Cowie MBBS Dip Sports Med DM-SMED FFSEM(UK) Chief Medical Officer, The Football Association;

Dr. Paul Jackson FFSEM

Consultant in Sport and Exercise Medicine

Dr. Matthew Hancock PhD

Human Performance Innovation Lead, British Army

Prof. Nick Peirce MBE BMedSci BMBS MRCOG MSc FISM FSEM Chief Medical Officer, England and Wales Cricket Board

Colin Bridgford

Chief Executive Officer and Safeguarding Lead, Manchester Football Association

Prof. Simon Kemp MA MBBS MRCGP MSc (SEM)FFSEM Sports Physician; Medical Services Director, Rugby Football Union

Prof. Kitrina Douglas

Professor of Narrative and Performative Research, University of West London

Dr. Julie Mytton

Dr. Mark Gillett MSc FRCS FRCEM FFSEM (UK&I) Chief Medical Officer, Premier League

Professor of Public Health, Global Health Research Lead, Director of Centre for Academic Child Health, UWE Bristol

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Applied Research

INTRODUCING OUR APPLIED RESEARCH STRATEGY 2030

Definitions

CONTENTS

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Applied Research

Our Objective

To establish Podium as a trusted leader in the development, promotion and adoption of evidence-based practices, interventions and policies in sports injury prevention.

Current Language

Our Approach

Embracing implementation science and behaviour change approaches to apply evidence in practice:

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Our Research Pillars

Balancing rapid response and developmental research projects to deliver measurable, long-term impact across interconnected pillars:

INJURY/ILLNESS

Recording, managing and preventing all physical complaints arising from or during sport participation

MENTAL WELLBEING

A recognised mediator between injury and participation, supported by evidence that mental health is both a risk factor for and consequence of injury and is one of the leading causes of youth sport drop-out

SUSTAINED SPORT PARTICIPATION

Particularly after injury/illness

Applied Research

Our Guiding Principles

support de-implementation of ineffective interventions as new evidence becomes available.

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Applied Research

Including:

How we work

Who we work with

Our work is guided by the Team-Sport Injury Prevention (TIP) Cycle*.It represents a continual cycle of evaluating the problem and contributing factors, developing context-specific strategies to minimise the problem, then evaluating the effect(s) of solution implementation.

The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology at the University of Oxford

Convening global expertise in pursuit of new research and innovation opportunities.

Universities and Research Organisations Podium Analytics Expert Advisory Board Sports Governing Bodies

We work openly and collaboratively across the international sports medicine research community, actively seeking and building trusted partnerships that share in the vision of More Sport, Less Injury.

Developed for sport injury prevention, the same process applies to preventing mental health problems and drop-out from sport.

Clubs, Schools and Events

Community Partners (Decision-makers, advocates and influencers, funding bodies)

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Applied Research - Injury/Illness

PLAYER PATHWAY INJURY SURVEILLANCE IN RUGBY

Implementing SportSmart in Premiership Rugby Academies to help monitor, manage, and reduce the risk of injury in young people.

It was the first season for Northampton Saints, with the club embracing SportSmart for around 400 of their Foundation Phase Academy players (U15/U16) across five regional sites.

This period represented our third season deploying SportSmart across Gloucester Rugby’s Developing Player Programme and saw the implementation of SportSmart grow to seven regional sites and around 800 players. This growth was driven by the new eight-year Men’s Professional Game Partnership agreement between the Rugby Football Union (RFU), PREM Rugby (previously Premiership Rugby - PRL), and the Rugby Players’ Association – resulting in SportSmart being deployed within the newly titled Foundation Phase Academy age groups (U15/U16).

Both clubs have committed to continue into the 2025–26 season – testament to the recognised value of the programme - and Northampton Saints have confirmed their support to be part of a case study to showcase the impact of our work.

Longitudinal PREM Rugby U18 Academy League research project

PREM Rugby, alongside the RFU, invited Podium to support on the development and delivery of a research project to explore the incidence, severity, burden and characteristics of match injuries and ‘match and collision’ characteristics during matches throughout the 2025 U18 Academy League Competition which ran over January and February 2025.

This project, led by Leeds Beckett University, with the University of Bath as an academic partner, was also extended to the Men’s U18 Six Nations competition (April 2025). It has been confirmed that this project will be delivered on an annual basis, with findings from the 2024–25 season expected to be finalised towards the start of 2026. The opportunity to involve use of instrumented mouthguards (IMGs) and Podium’s Trusted Research Environment (TRE) for Global Sport is being explored for future delivery.

The overall programme continues to develop positively, with a marked uptick in engagement of MySportSmart this season, with approximately 80% of parents/carers at Northampton Saints adopting the app and gaining valuable oversight of their child’s activity and injuries.

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Applied Research - Injury/Illness

Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

COMMUNITY RUGBY INJURY SURVEILLANCE AND PREVENTION PROJECT

Having been approached to take on the Community Rugby Injury Surveillance and Prevention Project (CRISP), in partnership with the RFU and University of Bath, we have made rapid progress in our discussions and are nearing completion on contractual terms that will see us support this invaluable project for the 2025–26 season onwards.

This is a major opportunity for Podium to support the longevity of, and build capacity around, one of the most successful community sport injury surveillance projects (to date).

Specifically, we will also be able to formally validate SportSmart (compared to existing data collection methods), be able to steer future CRISP research priorities and questions and support scaled implementation of SportSmart in community rugby clubs.

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Applied Research - Injury/Illness

Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

Working collaboratively with the University of Bath, to create online resources for teachers and coaches to better understand and support pupils going through growth spurts and accommodate for early and late developers.

The 2024–25 period saw the completion of our study with the University of Bath focused on ‘The Developing Child.’

With growth spurts being a factor uniquely affecting 11–18 -year-olds and a period that puts young people at increased risk of sports injury, the project aimed to bring established processes from elite pathways into school and grassroots sports environments, by delivering against key objectives:

We identified a significant gap in PE teachers’ knowledge and understanding of growth and maturation and its relevance in the context of PE and school sport, especially amongst women in sport provision roles.

94% of PE teachers believe that education on the adolescent growth spurt would improve their confidence in delivering developmentally appropriate experiences.

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Only 9%

of participants had received formal training on the adolescent years at either the BSc or PGCert level, with most training focused on early years and Key Stage 1.

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To address these gaps, we cocreated with teachers a digital educational curriculum, including interactive modules, evidence-based resources, and opportunities for ongoing professional development, and launched the curriculum as a feasibility study in Q4 2024.

understanding of growth and maturation while simultaneously enhanced key factors that have been shown to influence behaviour change. In addition, many of the lessons learned in this study (baseline levels of understanding, how this information is best structured and delivered, etc.)

are directly applicable to future developments of the programme for other audiences. There is significant potential to use these learnings to tailor the programme toward community sport and scale for wider implementation.

Teachers were able to engage with the material at their own pace and apply new insights directly into their practice.

The feasibility study resulted in significant improvement of PE teachers’ knowledge and

Study findings are being prepared for publication.

Applied Research - Injury/Illness

“Teachers reported limited knowledge of the physical changes that occur to the body during the adolescent growth spurt, the degree to which the growth spurt impacts risk for injury, the concept of bio-banding (maturity matching in sport), and the difference in size and athleticism that exist between early, on-time and late developers.

Teachers also expressed a lack of confidence in being able to explain concepts such as the adolescent growth spurt to pupils and parents, identify pupils currently experiencing a growth spurt, or in adapting PE or sport sessions to minimise risk for injury.

Gender and institutional differences were also evident, with female and state schoolteachers reporting lower levels of confidence and less access to specialist knowledge or support.

Across all demographics, over 90 percent of all teachers reported no exposure to the concepts of growth and maturation as part of their initial teacher training, highlighting a systemic gap in professional preparation.”

Dr Sean Cumming, Professor in Paediatric Exercise Science, University of Bath

This project is made possible through support from East Head Impact.

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Applied Research - Injury/Illness

ADAPTATION AND WORKLOAD

Translating the principles of workload management and performance adaptation into a practical tool for the school and club environment, to support targeted development, increase engagement, reduce injury risk, and help young people adapt in a healthy way.

In September 2024, we launched our 5-Stage workload-related Adaptation Model, designed to support teachers and coaches to reduce the risk of preventable injuries. The model helps users map out the key stages of adaptation into an achievable action plan; promoting positive adaptation and reducing the risk of failing to adapt, when injuries are ore likely to occur. Over the period, we have worked with select organisations to implement the model in practice, with key learnings informing our Performance Pathways Discovery work.

UK COACHING

In early 2025, we kicked off a collaboration with UK Coaching, a leading charitable organisation who advocate for the welfare and societal value of sport and physical activity coaches in the UK.

Our initial work together has been focused on co-creating a series of resources introducing the ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ of injury data collection in youth and community sport settings, with an emphasis on the SportSmart programme.

These resources build upon our foundational ‘Data-Informed Decisions’ work and will be launched in Q4 2025 via the UK Coaching Club Online Learning Zone.

“UK Coaching has partnered with Podium Analytics to co-create a sports injury informal resource series for coaches. From the initial conversation supporting an aligned resource, to the planning, initial design, resource development and through to publication, they were responsive, considered and challenging. Their approach exemplifies how great resources are created and what we’ve created together will genuinely benefit coaches and their participants. We would highly recommend Podium Analytics. Their subject matter knowledge, diligent approach and genuine commitment to supporting coaches make them an ideal collaboration partner.

Chris Chapman Learning Experience Manager UK Coaching

Podium Analytics Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024–2025

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

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AUDITOR’S REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

ADMIN DETAILS

Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

ROYAL BALLET INJURY PREVENTION SCREENING

Collaborating with the multidisciplinary healthcare team at The Royal Ballet School to explore opportunities to better understand the links between dance exposure and injury occurrence.

Working with The Royal Ballet Associate Programme, we completed the pilot of a screening and injury prevention tool designed to identify those most at risk of injury and to better understand the links between exposure and injury occurrence, with dancers between the ages of 11 and 19. The pilot work was very successful and there is interest in upscaling the work to benefit all the young dancers on the programme.

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IMPROVING SAFE PRACTICE BEHAVIOURS IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION

In early 2025, we kicked off a collaborative proof of concept project with the Association for Physical Education (AfPE) and PE Scholar*.

With the aim of raising awareness of safe practice skills (whilst enhancing the understanding and confidence of teachers, community sports coaches and volunteers relating to safe practices and injury prevention in school sport and physical activity in and around educational settings), the initiative involves filming common scenarios where safe practices are often overlooked and showcasing good practice. The films will be trialled in training workshops targeted through partnership networks in early 2026, with the ambition to roll out as part of an annual training programme for broader audiences.

*PE Scholar is a leading provider of resources and courses that support teachers of physical education and sports coaches in providing meaningful and inclusive PE and School Sport experiences.

Applied Research - Injury/Illness

DATA LITERACY

Supporting stakeholders in making informed decisions to prevent injury.

Launched in January 2025, our Data-Informed Decisions programme is designed to increase and improve the use of the SportSmart programme by illustrating the value of the information users observe and collect in their context, providing guidance on how to interpret this information, and signposting to reliable supporting resources. This aims to influence users’ capability, motivation and confidence in collecting data on injury and in making decisions about how to mitigate sports injury risk.

Our suite of step-by-step resources forms part of the onboarding process to SportSmart, supports the LTA SportSmart Feasibility Study (page 39), receiving positive support and feedback from initial users at the LTA Regional Player Development Centres, and has been built upon in our collaboration with UK Coaching (page 37), promoting practical injury prevention behaviours for the coaching community.

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Applied Research - Sustained Participation

Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE PATHWAY EXPERIENCES IN YOUTH TENNIS

Following a highly collaborative project discovery phase over the 2023–24 period to define the initial set of research projects that our partnership with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) will deliver, we moved into project delivery across 4 key work streams focused on supporting the experience of young tennis players (10–14-years-old) across the LTA’s Regional Player Development Centres (RPDCs).

1

2

3

4

Understanding experiences of RPDC stakeholders

(players, parents, coaches) in relation to their perception of talent development environment quality – successfully obtaining ethics approval over the 2024–25 period, with an initial phase of engagement work required before full-scale data collection.

Mapping ‘what good looks like’ for optimal talent

development environments in tennis – completing a visit, with LTA colleagues, in the period to the French Tennis Federation (FFT) to observe a different youth tennis context. This included visiting national and regional training centres, comparative to those supported by the LTA in the UK.

Assessing the feasibility of collecting injury information whilst helping to ensure ongoing data collection and education generate meaningful and reliable insights – completing a small-scale feasibility study with 5 of the 15 RPDCs for the use of SportSmart, which has provided invaluable feedback on desired platform and feature development requirements. The findings from this study have enabled us to move towards fuller-scale implementation within the RPDC network – supporting wider efforts to collect reliable data about growth, maturation, and training load.

Identifying factors that influence talent development and understanding how/if injury experiences influence player progression – successfully coordinating different working groups to develop a suitable study design for the first component of this work stream.

“Our partnership with Podium continues to challenge our current practices and thinking, ensuring that our focus remains on the areas that will have the greatest impact on young players’ development. By combining robust research with practical insights, we are better positioned to help children within the talent development network optimise their growth and performance while minimising avoidable injuries and time away from training or competition. The feasibility study has demonstrated the potential value of the SportSmart platform across the RPDC network, and we are excited to progress towards scaled implementation during the 2025–26 year.”

Andy Barnes, RPDC Network Lead, LTA

Over the coming months, our focus will be on the scaled implementation of SportSmart across the RPDC network (project #3), alongside working towards data collection for projects #1 and #4.

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Applied Research - Sustained Participation

UNDERSTANDING PERFORMANCE PATHWAYS AND ACADEMIES

The significance of pathways to injury prevention

A significant number of young people with sporting talent and/or a desire for sport engage in talent and performance pathways or academies. In the UK, this is estimated in the hundreds of thousands based on available data. These pathways operate alongside school and club sport, offering an organised route for nurturing talent with the dual aim of preparing some young athletes for professional careers and instilling a lifelong connection to sport.

Podium is currently involved with several research projects in pathways (including the LTA, Gloucester Rugby, Northampton Saints Rugby, the Royal Ballet School). Reflective discussions with sports stakeholders have highlighted the unique and evolving challenges faced by young people within these high-performance systems. Pathways are often the most structured and consistent element in a developing athlete’s life, providing an ecosystem of professional coaching, competitive exposure, specialist services (nutrition, mental health, sports science), and clear progression routes. When implemented well, they can be transformative for a young person’s

development and build lifelong skills for the future; however, this structure also presents significant challenges, especially if performance metrics overshadow other areas of development.

For many athletes, the journey through a pathway is punctuated by injury, deselection, or a gradual loss of interest. Young athletes entering pathways are rapidly exposed to a significantly greater volumes, intensities, and frequencies of training and competition compared to school or grassroots sport, often at a time when they are still undergoing major physical, emotional, and psychological development .

This increased exposure brings with it a heightened risk of injury, which can disrupt not only potential short-term progress but also long-term participation.

The effects of an injury sustained during this phase can have greater effects beyond removing a young person from training or selection. It can disconnect them from their passion, limit their sense of potential, and in some cases, have serious future health implications.

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Applied Research - Sustained Participation

Exploring the opportunity for impact

In early 2025, Podium completed a discovery project exploring Podium’s potential role in enhancing the experience and development of young people as they move through Talent, Performance and Academy Systems and assessing the opportunity for impact this represents.

Over a 4-month period, insight was gained through:

Reviews of the performance pathway models and welfare strategies of 17 different sports

Deep dive meetings with the performance pathway teams across rugby, football, ballet, cycling and tennis.

Interviews with coaches, science and medicine teams and young people in performance pathways

What have we learned?

We have identified that the early stages of the performance pathway represent a critical window of opportunity to positively shape young athletes’ experiences, which stakeholders consistently recognised as the phase with the greatest unmet need.

A multi-sport practitioner workshop, and presentation of the findings to the Podium Expert Advisory Board and other key experts, to review the evidence gained and seek input into and support for the conclusions made.

We are now focused on validating our discovery findings and insights with key stakeholders and scoping a pilot study to identify how many young athletes are exiting the pathway at this stage, and why, and begin to understand the impact of these unmet needs in different contexts.

Literature reviews of academic research including: models of talent development; young people’s experience of performance pathways; health monitoring, recording and reporting; factors considered when evaluating athletes’ rate of progression; reasons for, and the prediction of, drop-out from performance pathways.

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Applied Research - Sustained Participation

Top concerns highlighted in study

Under-reporting of injury is common, especially for chronic or growth-related issues. Athletes often fear that disclosing pain or limitation may result in them being seen as fragile, unreliable, or lacking the robustness required to progress. This culture of silence poses serious risks, not just to physical health, but to long-term engagement in sport.[1]

“... the lack of support when injured - there’s nothing in place, so people just leave. […] I’ve also had injuries where there was no support, especially on the performance programme. Athletes just drop off because there’s nothing in place for them.”

Ex-GB Rower Athlete

Prior injury is one of the best predictors of future injury. Despite this, proactive efforts to reduce injury risk, particularly those linked to growth, overuse, or early training adaptation, are often underdeveloped or inconsistently applied in the early stages.[2] The impact of this can be that many athletes drop out of the pathway – currently, no data exists to describe the scale of this in any sport.

1 Talak, M. Barriers to Musculoskeletal Injury Reporting in High School Athletes: A Qualitative Study. (Georgia Southern University, 2022)

2 Hewett, T. E. Prediction of Future Injury in Sport: Primary and Secondary Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury Risk and Return to Sport as a Model. Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy 47, 228–231 (2017)

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Applied Research - Mental Wellbeing

YOUNG VOICES IN SPORT

Young Voices – our multi-component programme of research, co-design and intervention implementation to support young people’s mental health during sports injury – is progressing well.

We are near completion on our research study in collaboration with the University of Bath, with submission to an academic journal for peer review expected this Autumn, and have been invited to share findings at the Protecting Mental Health in Sport and Exercise (PROMISE) conference in September 2025 and, alongside the UK Sports Institute and the University of Bath, at the Global Alliance for Mental Health and Sport (GAMeS) Conference in November 2025.

The study explores young people’s dynamic mental health though the injury course, including risk and protective factors for good mental health and longterm participation post-injury. Findings are feeding into the development of peer-to-peer support tools and bespoke training for coaches and families, ensuring young people get better psychological help when they are injured and as they return to sport.

“ ...this has been a real experience of “I have no idea what’s going on”…a lot of it wasn’t properly explained to me. And so, like not being in the know and like being really uncertain about an injury doesn’t help, especially when it’s going on so long.”

Maria, fractured tibia

Development of tools and resources is already underway. Over the period, we completed a literature review of narrative-informed health interventions to explore the most effective ways to use young people’s stories to improve mental outcomes post-injury and have started to explore how best to share resources with young people in a way that is authentic, fosters connection and ensures broad reach across the most effective channels for this demographic. We will be piloting these resources with young people in the first half of 2026.

The Young Voices programme continues to achieve very positive engagement and support from mental health partners and governing bodies of sport who recognise this critical gap in research and recovery support, and from the young people themselves who are impacted by injury.

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Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

Applied Research - Priorities for the 2025-26 period

PRIORITIES FOR THE 2025–2026 PERIOD

Podium Analytics Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024–2025

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Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

Trusted Research Environment for Global Sport

TRUSTED RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT FOR GLOBAL SPORT

In the continued pursuit of excellence in academic research into sports injury, and to deliver more effective, sustainable and safer use of player data, we have further developed the Trusted Research Environment (TRE) for Global Sport over the 2024–25 period.

Our entire approach is founded on the needs and insights provided from individuals and organisations within the global sports community, such as National and International Federations, WADA and university researchers, and on global best-practice from existing TREs that have facilitated groundbreaking discoveries in cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and other areas of medical science.

Most recently deployed for use by The Podium Institute’s Sudden Cardiac Death / Cardiac Adaption Research, Podium is in advanced discussions with several International Federations and major sports Leagues who wish to embrace the collective opportunity to advance research into key sports injuries, whilst benefitting from the extensive technology, legal and governance structures that are being developed to facilitate this.

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Trusted Research Environment for Global Sport

Establishing Exemplary Governance and Ethics

We have invested heavily in ensuring the best governance is in place, as well as athlete representation at every step, working with a global expert panel in the detailed development of an Ethics and Governance Framework which is now complete and endorsed by the panel.

The Framework underpins the practical use of the TRE, setting out core policy positions on who can access it and for what. It also sets out the ethical considerations and expectations of both those who submit their data and those who use it.

Appointed with the support of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), the working group included:

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Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

THE TRE EXPLAINED The challenge and opportunity for global sport

International Federations (IF), National Governing Bodies (NGB) and Professional Leagues have been commissioning academic research into sports injury for many years, resulting in many steps forward in the field of sports injury and prevention, but they have also left many opportunities un-investigated or untapped due to the constraints of the approach, the economics of the sport or the diversity of academic institutions that are able to access data to undertake research on a specific issue.

In addition, the data types that can be utilised for research, such as highresolution video, and the need to accurately combine video with other data sources such as instrumented technologies and wearables, is putting a new scale of demand on sports and academic bodies for data matching, cleansing, curation and storage which often needs to be combined with high-speed accessibility.

Valid and reliable data is at the core of all good work in academic research. Through data sharing, academic institutions can help identify new opportunities to reduce the impact and incidence of sports injuries, and to improve the quality, safety and cost effectiveness of sports injury prevention, treatment, protocols, and equipment.

The specific nature of the research, the structure of the research agreements and the nature of consents obtained from players has usually meant that data is not available to other researchers within academic institutions on behalf of the same sport.

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What is a TRE?

The TRE provides the opportunity to catalyse research and science progress through the collection, curation and secure access to sports injury-related data, endeavouring to have the same impact in sports injury research that has been achieved in cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

The TRE is the evolution of the multisport data lake that Podium had previously developed, with the TRE Minimum Viable Project built with value-in-kind support from Google and Google Partner Go Reply in the 2023–24 period.

TREs are controlled digital environments used to store or analyse sensitive data securely, allowing researchers to undertake in-depth analysis on rich, joinedup datasets without them seeing any identifiable information. They promote the sharing and reuse of data and models, provide an opportunity to impose higher standards in how commonly used datasets are stored and curated, and have been proven to be incredibly successful in other areas of medical sciences over the past decade or so.

The TRE houses data of varied types (telemetry, video, empirical, biological, demographic) and from varied sources, including data from Podium’s SportSmart platform, historical and future player data from Sports Governing Bodies, and data from projects at The Podium Institute.

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PRIORITIES FOR THE 2025–2026 PERIOD

• We will continue to further develop the TRE over the coming period. This will include portal development that will enable researchers to more easily access workspaces and browse and navigate available data sources and models, in addition to implementing key governance safeguards outlined as part of the Ethics and Governance Framework creation. We will continue to learn from the experience of researchers using the TRE to plan enhancements and further feature development.

• We will build on the Ethics and Governance Framework to establish a Data Access Group (DAG) who will have the responsibility for receiving, assessing and approving applications from researchers wishing to use the TRE.

• Onboarding to and engagement with the TRE will be improved by designing a seamless, supportive experience that enables users and data providers to join the TRE easily, understand its use and become productive quickly.

• Our data capabilities will be a key focus, implementing advanced data anonymisation techniques across multiple data sets and continuing to evolve our data matching capabilities across multimodal data sets.

• We will continue to drive interest in the TRE, engaging Sports Governing Bodies, Leagues and Academics around the opportunity the TRE represents for their needs and adding new and diverse data sets that will be of use to sports injury researchers.

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SportSmart

Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

From tracking injuries and managing concussion to supporting a player’s safe return to play, SportSmart connects the right people with the right information, when and where they need it most.

Sport is for everyone, and everyone deserves to play with confidence.

That’s why we created SportSmart, a free, easy-to-use injury management app built for schools and grassroots clubs.

Grounded in real-world experience, SportSmart empowers coaches, teachers, parents and players to make informed, timely decisions that put player wellbeing first.

Club and school injury tracking

Parent and player tools

Real-time insight, informing real-time action

Best practice and resource hub

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SportSmart

ADOPTION

+ 180,000 players from 187 Live or Onboarding Schools and Clubs

GRADUATED RETURN TO SPORT (GRAS)

New workflow for GRAS

Developing the Concussion

Over the period, we completed a project to determine a new workflow and language for Graduated Return to Activity and Sport (GRAS), to support the new UK Concussion Guidelines for Grassroots Sport (published in April 2023).

Recovery Tool

The next feature in our Head Injury Tool Suite, the digitised GRAS process – the SportSmart Concussion Recovery Tool - will help players, their parents and teachers/coaches become more informed in managing sports-related concussion, providing a step-by-step tool that guides users through a 21-day (minimum) return to play process.

The Guidelines provide a paper-based process to returning to activity and sport following a concussion. We worked closely with Professor James Calder, Chair of the Expert Drafting Group for the new UK Concussion Guidelines, and an expert group of Chief Medical Officers of major sports to develop an update to the process.

Once a head injury has been logged in the SportSmart app, the player will automatically be placed in Stage 1 of 6. At each stage, there is clear guidance on relevant recommended activity levels and access to concussion-related resources via integration with the SportSmart Hub.

We undertook research with schools and clubs to check the language and logic and completed a user-centric design process in order to commence the development of an automated, digital GRAS process into the SportSmart ecosystem.

The tool was soft launched in September 2025 and will be supported by a targeted campaign for broader engagement.

In addition, we created a ‘Guide to digitising the GRAS process’ to sit alongside the UK Concussion Guidelines to support other organisations who wish to develop GRAS into an app.

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SportSmart

MARKET INSIGHTS

Towards the end of the period, we kicked off a Market Research project to provide insights relating to our key audiences, their injury management needs, and drivers and barriers to using SportSmart. This work will inform the SportSmart feature development pipeline as well as ongoing Marketing and Communications.

AWARDS RECOGNITION

SportSmart was named a Finalist at the Sports Technology Awards in the ‘Best Health, Wellness and Technology’ category, and having been shortlisted, was awarded highly commended in the ‘Charity Project of the Year’ category at the UK IT Industry Awards.

PLATFORM OPTIMISATION

ENHANCED SECURITY AND DATA PRIVACY INFRASTRUCTURE

We have continued to develop the SportSmart platform (desktop and app) over the course of the year, providing improved usability, functionality and features for our users, as well as improved back-office efficiency, including:

We continue to demonstrate our commitment to providing the highest level of information security for our partners and data subjects and, having achieved ISO/ IEC 27001:2022 (the latest version of the internationally recognised ISO information security standard) in May 2024, we recently successfully passed our ISO 27001 annual audit.

This is in addition to our Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications which we achieved again this period – the latter being an externally audited and nationally recognised information and cybersecurity certification.

The ISO/IEC 27001:2022 approach means that we have implemented a robust Information Security Management System that meets internationally recognised standards for managing sensitive company and customer information. We are continually improving and reducing risks associated with our systems and processes, and adapting to new threats and technologies, to ensure confidentiality, integrity and availability of information, whilst maintaining efficiency, productivity and optimised experience for our internal team as well as external stakeholders.

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SportSmart

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SPORTSMART
ON THE ROAD
Over the course of the period, we’ve
had the opportunity to visit our
SportSmart community across the UK,
meeting with teachers and coaches
and helping to engage their respective
communities (parents, participants,
associated clubs and schools).
In particular, we have regularly attended PREM
Rugby Academy training and matches, in support
of the Applied Research work, visited a number
of schools to engage directly with parents and
players, and in the summer of 2024, were invited
to attend the Northampton Rugby Club Summer
Camp – a two-week long event for over 1,000
players with SportSmart being used extensively to
look after players.
This valuable face-to-face time has helped us to
iterate our programme and platform effectively
based on feedback, ensure the smooth onboarding
of organisations to SportSmart and start to
develop compelling case studies.
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Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

SportSmart

PRIORITIES FOR THE 2025–2026 PERIOD

• Complete the SportSmart Market Research project, integrate findings into ongoing and future development planning and use insights to inform a review of SportSmart Brand and Messaging.

• Complete the development of the Concussion Recovery Tool (digitised GRAS process) and launch the tool in a phased approach to key audience groups. New back-office reporting capabilities will enable the SportSmart team to track head injuries being logged and the subsequent effective usage of the Recovery tool, as well as gather feedback via direct contact and surveys to inform future development needs. A targeted campaign to engage National Governing Bodies and their club networks will commence in Q4 2025. Designed to support the overall growth of the SportSmart community, this proactive marketing initiative will highlight the benefits of the concussion tools available in SportSmart.

onboarding process for SportSmart and MySportSmart to improve the ease with which schools, clubs, teachers, coaches and players can begin using the apps, as well as enhancing backoffice administration through better integrations with our CRM platform.

• A key focus for the coming period will be the development of direct-toconsumer features. Currently, users must be associated with an onboarded SportSmart organisation (a club or school) to be able to access app tools. Direct to consumer development will enable any individual to utilise the SportSmart concussion tools and self-report any incidents that occur outside of organisations that are using SportSmart. This development, along with the enhanced sign up and onboarding process, will substantially broaden the potential number of individuals that Podium can support.

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Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

Advocacy and Awareness

ADVOCACY AND AWARENESS

Promoting and achieving support for evidencebased practices, resources and policies within youth and grassroots sport, and building an active community of organisations and individuals participating in injury prevention.

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Advocacy and Awareness

FUNDRAISING

A new Fundraising and Commercial Strategy has been developed with a key focus on diversifying income streams and building sustainable funding mechanisms to support Podium’s 5-year Strategy to 2030, as well as demonstrating impact and scalability to support grant applications.

Advanced discussions are underway with corporate partners exploring multi-year collaborations in sports injury prevention and our development of revenue-generating models is progressing well.

The fundraising outlook for 2025–26 shows strong interest from diverse sources that could substantially enhance Podium’s financial position and operational capacity.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND POLICY

Having made considerable progress in our collaboration with UK Government in the years leading up to the General Election in July 2024, predominantly focused on the issue of concussion in sport due to ministerial focus on this issue following the UK Government’s Concussion in Sport Inquiry, we have focused our efforts in the 2024–25 period on engaging with the new Government and on seeking to reestablish our relationship with Special Advisors in key departments.

In addition, we submitted written evidence to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) Select Committee Inquiry - Game On: Community and School Sport - in early January 2025. The inquiry will examine the health of sport in local communities and schools and assess whether more can be done to sustain and grow sporting opportunities for all.

The start of 2025 saw the progression of the digitisation of the Graduated Return to Activity and Sport (GRAS) project (see page 50). The final process and accompanying language were presented to the DCMS Concussion Protocol Panel of Experts and were subsequently approved. The guidance has now been written and designed up for final approval by DCMS and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and is expected to be formally endorsed and published alongside the wider UK Concussion Guidance for Non-Elite (Grassroots) Sport.

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Advocacy and Awareness

COLLABORATIONS

We have further engaged both National and International Governing Bodies and Professional Leagues regarding research collaborations and opportunities.

With several discussions ongoing with key International Federations, we were invited back to present to the Association for Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) Medical and Science Consultative Group – a group focused on the practical and operational issues of common interest for all International Federations in the areas of medical and anti-doping activity, including all athlete health-related matters.

We welcomed Paddle UK (formerly British Canoeing) alongside our existing collaborations with the

Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), the Rugby Football Union (RFU), England Hockey, Hockey Wales, England Athletics, The Royal Ballet School, British Judo (all nations), and England Ice Hockey, as well as Leagues and Clubs including PREM Rugby (formerly Premiership Rugby), Gloucester Rugby, Northampton Saints, Dundee United and St Mirren.

Through our work at The Podium Institute, close collaboration also continues with GB Snowsports, the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI), the International Volleyball

Association (FIVB), Nottingham Forest FC and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).

We continue to develop our relationships across the Education community, have progressed our work in collaboration with the Association for Physical Education, with a focus on upskilling PE teachers in injury prevention, and continue to work with a number of schools across the country who are embracing SportSmart to streamline sports injury management, including those of the United Learning and Outwood Grange Academies Trust.

“This collaboration will enable us to better understand the individual and specific needs of our athletes across the discipline pathway and keep them on the water where they love to be! It’s great to be able to contribute to a wider body of research that has the potential to lead to safety improvements at youth level across all sports.”

Richard Ramsdale, Head of Pathways, Competitions and Events, Paddle UK

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INTRODUCTION

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Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

Advocacy and Awareness

AMBASSADORS

We continue to benefit from the insight and personal perspectives of injury and sport participation of our Ambassadors, helping us to shape research and solutions as well as engage stakeholders across sport and beyond.

In addition to recognising the valuable ongoing support of our Ambassadors – Alex Danson-Bennett MBE (Hockey), Sam Ward (Hockey), Steven McRae (Ballet), Amy Williams MBE (Skeleton), Beth Tweddle MBE (Gymnastics), and Tim Henman OBE (Tennis) – we extend special thanks to Georgia Hunter Bell, 1500m Olympic Bronze Medallist, Holly Deering, Manchester United Women’s U21, and John Kennedy, former Scottish International Football Player, who shared their personal stories of injury and comeback, helping to spotlight the physical and mental impact of injury.

Over the period, we wrapped our Road to Recovery Series (shared via Social Media) that followed Steven McRae’s journey through rehabilitation after sustaining an ACL injury whilst performing on stage at the Royal Opera House in Autumn 2023. Steven’s first first-hand experience of the devastating impact of injury, (in particular his Achilles tendon tear

during a live performance in 2019 – caused through long-term physical and mental burnout), makes Steven an invaluable advocate for greater understanding of the causal effects of injury and the need to empower teachers and coaches to better support young people in their formative years to deliver lasting change.

MEDIA ENGAGEMENT

Over the course of 2024–25, we secured key coverage including:

and gained meaningful coverage, underscoring the relevance of our work and its resonance within the industry.

including the Daily Mail and The Sun.

AWARDS

In addition to awards recognition for SportSmart (see page 51), Podium was named British Data Awards 2025 Finalist in the Not-for-Profit category.

“My own experience with injury now helps me relate to injured players… Of course, we are pushing players and developing them, but it’s also our job to make them feel comfortable. And so that culture and environment feeds into how you handle them when they are injured. There’s always that initial period at the start of the injury process which is the darkest – you go from playing in big games to all of a sudden being out for the next six, nine months, a year. That’s the hardest part because you are at the very start of the journey.”

John Kennedy, Ex-Assistant Manager, Celtic

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Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

Advocacy and Awareness

73%

of respondents believing that the NHS should record whether a head injury that receives medical attention was sustained during sport

Endorsement for mandating first aid training for volunteer youth sports coaches

Widespread backing for equipping grassroots sports coaches to support young people’s general and injury-related mental health

Overwhelming agreement that for young people, the benefits of sport outweigh the risks of injury

Injury recording should be mandatory

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Programme Update June 2024–May 2025

Advocacy and Awareness

PRIORITIES FOR THE 2025–2026 PERIOD

• Deliver against the new Fundraising and Commercial Strategy; diversifying income streams, bedding in sustainable funding mechanisms, and showcasing our value, impact and scalability to funders, partners and the world of sport.

• Continue to engage the new Government, in particular in relation to our work in concussion and the Graduated Return to Activity and Sport (GRAS) project and the benefits of establishing a national database of sports injuries.

• Develop Podium’s profile and demonstrate thought-leadership through proactive marketing and

communications activity and contribution to key meetings, conferences and media inquiries, drawing on opportunities that our research presents for engaging our varied audiences.

• Deliver the 2025 edition of the Safety in Sport Perception survey, in collaboration with YouGov, and use findings to inform and support stakeholder engagement and research projects.

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ADMIN DETAILS

FINANCIAL REVIEW

The financial statements have been prepared for the year ended 31 May 2025.

Overview

The financial statements on pages 73–92 have been prepared for the year ended 31 May 2025.

Total income for the year was £3.4 million (2024: £3 million) which largely comprised £2.5 million in private donations and donations of £0.5 million and £0.3m received from Cobalto Holdings 2 Limited and CVC Philanthropy Limited respectively. This funding has been provided to support the ongoing activities of the charity.

Total expenditure in the year was £4.7 million (2024 restated: £5.0 million). In the year ended 31 May 2022 Podium fully recognised its grant commitment to the University of Oxford in respect of the initial 6-year period of the Podium Analytics Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology. The long-term element of this grant was discounted to reflect the time value of money, resulting in expenditure of £13.1 million being recognised in the year ended 31 May 2022 in respect of this grant. During the year ended 31 May 2025 the unwinding

of the discounting effect meant that a £0.3 million expense was recognised during the period. The remaining £4.4 million expenditure in this financial year was predominately related to the cost of developing our SportSmart injury insight platform, our research activities and other charitable programmes together with staff costs and administrative overheads.

The net movement in funds for the year amounted to a deficit of £1.3 million (2024 restated: £2 million deficit). Net liabilities of the group as at 31 May 2025 were £9.9 million (2024 restated: £10.8 million net liabilities). Net current liabilities totalled £3.5 million (2024 restated: £3.7 million net liabilities) which primarily consisted of £3.9 million grants payable to the Podium Analytics Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology, less cash and other receivables.

Charity funds

Unrestricted funds

Unrestricted funds comprise those funds that are not subject to specific donor restrictions placed on them in respect of either their ultimate purpose or under the terms of an endowment. Total unrestricted funds of the group at 31 May 2025 were £9.9 million deficit (2024 restated: £10.8 million deficit). General reserves are defined as that portion of unrestricted funds remaining once the trustees have designated amounts for specific purposes.

Designated funds at 31 May 2025 were £2.2m surplus (2024 restated: £0.2m surplus). Designated funds represent amounts allocated to a long term loan discounting reserve. When interest-free long term loans are drawn down they are recognised at the fair value of the liability. The difference between the fair value and the nominal value of the loan is allocated to the long term loan discounting reserve which is unwound, as an interest expense, over the life of the loan.

Unrestricted funds were primarily in deficit at the balance sheet date due to the accounting treatment of the grant award to the University of Oxford for the initial 6-year period of the Podium Analytics Institute for Youth Sports Medicine and Technology. This grant was recognised in full as expenditure in the year ended 31 May 2022 as it is committed and unconditional. Payment of this grant, however, is spread over a 6-year period of the commitment with the last payment due in May 2027.

Cash payments over the next two years total £6.5 million on a discounted basis (see note 13 on page 86). The residual deficit has been funded by loans from an entity related to a Trustee.

The Trustees are confident that the balance sheet deficit position will reverse as anticipated future income is generated.

Restricted funds

Restricted funds are funds subject to specific restrictions defined by the donor. Total restricted funds of the group at 31 May 2025 were £nil (2024: £0.1m surplus). Previously, Podium has received a grant to support its work on its Adolescent Growth Spurt research project which has been fully expensed.

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FINANCIAL REVIEW CONTINUED

Reserves policy

The Board of Trustees considers the key measure of sustainability for the Charity to be current and future liquidity cover, rather than the surplus or deficit accounting position.

The Trustees have set an appropriate reserves policy relating to liquidity, based on the relationship between readily available funds and the cash required to sustain the Charity’s operations for an anticipated period of time as detailed below.

The Trustees have determined that, after an allowance for future income expectations, the Charity should maintain cash and have access to committed and readily available long-term financing sufficient to fund not less than 12 months’ operating expenditure (excluding the direct costs of income generation and costs of future programmes which are yet to be committed). In the event that the Charity faces difficult financial circumstances, this reserve level could allow for the Charity’s operations to continue during a period of managed adjustment to these new circumstances.

Based on current forecasts, this policy requires the Charity to have access to cash and committed long-term financing of £9.0 million. The Charity had net current liabilities of £3.5 million at the balance sheet date. This included cash of £0.2 million.

Additionally, further future funding is expected from the CVC Foundation and Cobalto Holdings 2 Limited totalling £0.8 million, to be received in the year to 31 May 2026.

Going concern

The Trustees must satisfy themselves as to Podium Analytics’ ability to continue as a going concern for a minimum of 12 months from the approval of the financial statements.

Podium Analytics had net liabilities of £9.9 million (2024 restated: £10.8 million net liabilities) as described above, and net current liabilities of £3.5 million (2024: net liabilities of £3.7 million) at the balance sheet date, inclusive of payments due to the University of Oxford in the next 12 months. At the balance sheet date, Podium Analytics held cash of £0.2 million. Podium Analytics has an active fundraising programme, which generated £3.4 million in the 2024/25 financial year, as well as a number of plans to diversify income. In addition, since May 2025

Podium has received a further £3.0 million in loan funding from an entity related to a Trustee. All of Podium’s loans have a repayment date of November 2034.

This, together with anticipated future income and the ability to manage expenditure as appropriate, provides assurance that Podium Analytics will continue to have access to sufficient liquid resources to meet its obligations as they fall due. A Trustee has also provided a commitment to support the costs of the charity for the coming 12 months.

The Trustees have reviewed financial forecasts beyond a period of 12 months from the approval of the financial statements. This included an assessment of budgets, business plans and cash flow forecasts. As a result of this review, the Trustees have a reasonable expectation that the Charity has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future. As a consequence, they continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the annual accounts.

Pensions

Podium Analytics operates a defined contribution workplace pension scheme which is available for employees to join at any time. Contributions made to the plan during the financial year totalled £66,909 (2024: £62,827).

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PRINCIPAL RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES

The Trustees are responsible for ensuring that there are effective and adequate risk management and internal control systems in place to manage the strategic and operational risks to which the Charity is exposed.

Risk Management Framework

The Trustees are responsible for ensuring that there are effective and adequate risk management and internal control systems in place to manage the strategic and operational risks to which the Charity is exposed. Processes are in place regarding risk management and internal controls, which include the following:

A comprehensive risk management framework which meets the Charity Commission’s requirements and sets out the processes that we use to identify and manage risks in all our activities.

This process is supported by the Podium Analytics corporate risk register which is regularly reviewed with the Senior Management Team.

The Trustees review the corporate risk register at least twice a year, in addition to review by the Audit and Risk Committee. In the course of these reviews, the Board considers:

All major programmes and projects are measured for risk, scrutinised by the Senior Management Team through a documented project approval process and monitored by the Board of Trustees to ensure they are properly planned and implemented.

Data Protection

We continue to develop and improve our framework for supporting the use of personal data in order to maintain controls around known areas of risk and implement strong ‘privacy by design’ in new systems. Consideration is given to planned future activities as well as current activities being undertaken. This includes implementing Data Protection Impact Assessments where appropriate and ensuring our work is transparent through our online Privacy Centre.

Major Risks

The Senior Management Team manage an extensive Risk Matrix and review risks on a regular basis. The Board of Trustees review updates to the risks and actions during the year.

The table below summarises key risks identified along with actions to mitigate them.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

TRUSTEES’ REPORT AUDITOR’S REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS ADMIN DETAILS

PRINCIPAL RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES CONTINUED

Research

Research that we fund, collaborate on or deliver internally:

Community

A lack of engagement, collaboration and/or support from Sports Governing Bodies, schools, clubs, Government or its agencies, and end users slows the progress of our research and charitable programmes.

Technology

A critical technology failure, data security breach of Podium data or systems, and/or noncompliance of partners and/or suppliers with data protection regulations and data sharing agreements between Podium and its partners.

Future-fit

Income targets from fundraising and marketing activities not achieved and/or failure to maximise commercial projects via Podium Applied Technologies.

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STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

Podium Analytics is a registered charity in England and Wales (charity number 1183716) and in Scotland (charity number SC051893) and is constituted as a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (company number 11831773). Its objects

and powers are set out in its Memorandum and Articles of Association.

Board of Trustees

The Board of Trustees is responsible for the governance and strategy of Podium Analytics. The Board meets quarterly and is currently comprised of six Trustees who have full legal responsibility for the actions of Podium Analytics. Trustees are appointed for an initial term of three years that can be extended by a further three years on a rolling basis. Members of the Charity have guaranteed the liabilities of the company up to £10 each.

The Trustees are the directors of the company for the purposes of the Companies Act 2006 and under charity law they have legal duties and responsibilities as Trustees. The Board must comprise of a minimum of three Trustees. During the year, and up to the date of approval of this annual report, there was a qualifying third-party indemnity in place for directors, as allowed by Section 234 of the Companies Act 2006.

Podium Analytics’ Trustees are chosen for their mix of skills and abilities. Trustees must have sufficient collective skills to ensure that the governance of Podium Analytics is sound and meets its legal obligations. Individual Trustees must have relevant business, professional or organisational experience to contribute to the collective role of the Board and must also have a strong degree of personal commitment and the personal qualities to work collectively to deliver a common mission.

Trustees must declare the nature and extent of any interest they have in a proposed transaction or arrangement entered into by the Charity. If a conflict of interest arises, the unconflicted Trustees may authorise such a transaction or arrangement if the conflicted Trustee is absent from the part of the meeting at which it is discussed, the conflicted Trustee does not vote on any such matter and is not counted when considering whether a quorum of Trustees is present, and the unconflicted Trustees consider it in the interests of the Charity to authorise the conflict of interests in the circumstances applying.

Trustees

Sir Ron Dennis CBE

Peter Hamlyn MBBS BSC MD FRCS FISM

Robin Fenwick

Kristina Murrin CBE

Donald Mackenzie

Sir Anthony Seldon FRSA FRHistS FKC (appointed 16 January 2025)

Responsibility for recruiting new members of the Board is delegated by the Board to the Nominations and Remuneration Committee. One of its aims is to ensure a broad mix of skills and backgrounds. All new Trustees receive a comprehensive induction and are invited to spend time with members of the Senior Management Team as required.

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STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT CONTINUED

Decision-making

The Board of Trustees is responsible for the governance and strategy of Podium Analytics. The Board has established various sub-committees with specific delegated responsibilities, including the Audit and Risk committee and the Nominations and Remuneration committee, and our research programmes are overseen by the Expert Advisory Board.

To ensure that Podium Analytics is managed efficiently and effectively, the Trustees have delegated a range of day-to-day decision-making powers to the Chief Executive Officer, who reports directly to the Board of Trustees. The Trustees have also established appropriate controls and reporting mechanisms to ensure that the Chief Executive Officer and Senior Management Team operate within the scope of the powers delegated to them.

The delegation policy is updated on an ongoing basis and is formally reviewed and approved by the Trustees. The last update was in April 2023.

Senior Management Team

The Senior Management Team is responsible for the day-to-day running of the charity under authority delegated by the Board of Trustees to the Chief Executive Officer.

The Senior Management Team proposes to the Board of Trustees where the charity should invest its time, money and expertise. It reviews strategic changes to the charity’s activities prior to consideration by the Board. At the date of approval of this report, the Senior Management Team is comprised of:

Andy Hunt, Chief Executive Officer

Stephen Jones, Chief Operating Officer

Damian Smith, Chief Technology Officer

Harriet Strzelecki,

Marketing Lead

James McAllister CGMA,

Finance and Business Operations Director

Dr Carly McKay BKin MSc PhD, Director of Research

Layal Marten, Director of Fundraising

Public benefit

In reviewing our aims and objectives, and planning future activities, the Trustees have taken into account the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit. The Trustees always ensure that the activities undertaken are in line with the charitable objectives and aims of Podium Analytics.

As highlighted earlier in this report, some of our planned initiatives will be specifically targeted at certain age ranges. However, by their very nature, all our charitable activities are undertaken for the public benefit.

Fundraising

Podium Analytics did not make any direct approaches to the general public in its fundraising nor use other providers to complete fundraising activities on its behalf during the year. There were therefore no fundraising complaints received during the year.

The overall fundraising strategy of the charity is regularly addressed by the Board of Trustees in exercise of their duties under CC20 Charity Commission guidance.

Our staff

During the year, regular communications are provided to our staff through various channels, including updates on the Charity’s progress. We consult with employees on a regular basis so that their views can be taken into account in making decisions which are likely to affect their interests.

Employment practices and pay

Podium Analytics is committed to employment policies which follow best practice, based on equal opportunities for all employees, irrespective of sex, race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, age, employment status, disability or marital status.

Podium Analytics gives full and fair consideration to applications for employment from people with disabilities, having regard to their particular aptitudes and abilities.

We do not condone or tolerate any form of discrimination in our recruitment or employment practices.

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STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT CONTINUED

All employees and applicants are treated on merit, fairly, with respect and dignity, recognised as individuals and valued for the contribution they make, provided fair and equal training, development, reward and progression opportunities, and are accountable for the impact of their own behaviour and actions.

Pay

We are committed to fairness in our remuneration practices. We conduct an annual salary review with increases awarded for individual performance.

Information regarding the remuneration spend and the number of employees with pay over £60,000 is included in Note 5 to the financial statements on page 81.

Senior Management Pay

To achieve our objectives, we need to attract and retain high-performing senior management. Each position on the Senior Management Team is benchmarked and set appropriately. The aggregate remuneration of our Senior Management Team is disclosed in Note 5 to the financial statements.

Related party relationships

Details of transactions with related parties are set out in Note 6 to the financial statements on page 82.

Auditor

Blick Rothenberg Audit LLP has expressed its willingness to continue to act as auditor.

The reference and administrative details on page 93 form part of the Trustees’ Report.

The Trustees confirm that the annual report and financial statements of the Charity and the group comply with the current statutory requirements, the requirements of the Charity’s governing document and the provisions of the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP), applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2019).

Since the Charity qualifies as small under section 383 of the Companies Act 2006, the strategic report required of medium

and large companies under The Companies Act 2006 (Strategy Report and Director’s Report) Regulations 2013 is not required.

The Trustees’ Annual Report was approved by the Board of Trustees (in their capacity as company directors), on 16 December 2025.

Sir Ron Dennis CBE Chairman

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STATEMENT OF TRUSTEES’ RESPONSIBILITIES

The Trustees (who are also directors of Podium Analytics for the purposes of company law) are responsible for preparing the Trustees’ Annual Report and Financial

Statements in accordance with applicable law and regulations.

Company law requires the Trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year. Under that law, the Trustees have prepared the financial statements in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Standards, comprising FRS 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland, and applicable law (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice). Under company law, the Trustees must not approve the financial statements unless they are satisfied that they give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charitable company and the group and of the incoming resources and application of resources, including the income and expenditure, of the charitable group for that year. In preparing these financial statements, the Trustees are required to:

The Trustees are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records that are sufficient to show and explain the charitable company’s transactions and disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charitable company and the group and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charitable company and the group and for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

The Trustees are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the charitable company’s website. Legislation in the United Kingdom governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.

In the case of each Trustee in office at the date the Trustees’ Report is approved, that:

Sir Ron Dennis CBE Chairman

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INDEPENDENT AUDITOR’S REPORT TO THE TRUSTEES OF PODIUM ANALYTICS

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of Podium Analytics (the ‘charitable company’) for the year ended 31 May 2025 which comprise the consolidated statement of financial activities, the group and charity balance sheets, the consolidated statement of cash flows and the related notes, including a summary of significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102 ‘The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland’ (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

In our opinion, the financial statements:

• have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006, the Charities Act 2011, the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 and regulation 8 of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006.

Basis for opinion

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the charitable company in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the United Kingdom, including the Financial Reporting Council’s Ethical Standard, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the trustees’ use of the going concern basis of accounting

in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other information

The other information comprises the information included in the annual report other than the financial statements and our auditors' report thereon. The trustees are responsible for the other information. The other information comprises the information included

in the Annual report, other than the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon.

Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance

conclusion thereon.

In connection with our audit of the financial statements, our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise

appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether there is a material misstatement in the financial statements or a material misstatement of the other information. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact.

We have nothing to report in this regard.

Opinion on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion, based on the work undertaken in the course of the audit:

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prepared in accordance with applicable legal requirements.

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In light of our knowledge and understanding of the charitable company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the Trustees’ report.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which Companies Act 2006 and the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (as amended) require us to report to you if, in our opinion:

regime and take advantage of the small companies’ exemptions in preparing the Trustees’ report and from the requirement to prepare a Strategic report.

Responsibilities of Trustees

As explained more fully in the Trustees’ responsibilities statement, the Trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the charitable company or to cease operations,

or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Auditors responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

We have been appointed as auditor under section 145 of the Charities Act 2011 and section 44(1)(c) of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 and report in accordance with the Act and relevant regulations made or having effect thereunder.

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance, but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

Irregularities, including fraud, are

instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined

above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud is detailed below:

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alert to instances of non-compliance throughout the audit.

We assessed the susceptibility of the charity’s financial statements to material misstatement, including obtaining an understanding of how fraud might occur, by:

To address the risk of fraud through management bias and override of controls, we:

In response to the risk of irregularities and non-compliance with laws and regulations, we designed procedures which included, but were not limited to:

There are inherent limitations in our audit procedures described above. The more removed that laws and regulations are from financial transactions, the less likely it is that we would become aware of non-compliance.

Auditing standards also limit the audit procedures required to identify noncompliance with laws and regulations to enquiry of the trustees and other management and the inspection of regulatory and legal correspondence, if any. Material misstatements that arise due to fraud can be harder to detect than those that arise from error as they may involve deliberate concealment or collusion.

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company’s members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006, and to the trustees in accordance with regulation 10 of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006.

Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company’s members/trustees those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and its members/ trustees, as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

Mark Hart

(Senior statutory auditor)

for and on behalf of

Blick Rothenberg Audit LLP

Chartered Accountants Statutory Auditor 16 Great Queen Street Covent Garden London WC2B 5AH

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

TRUSTEES’ REPORT AUDITOR’S REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS ADMIN DETAILS

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025 (incorporating an income and expenditure account)

2025 2025 2025 2025 2024 2024 2024 2024
Unrestricted Designated Restricted Total Unrestricted As Restated Restricted As Restated
funds funds funds funds Designated funds Total
funds
Note £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £
Income from:
Donations 2 3,281,920 - - 3,281,920 2,822,510 - - 2,822,510
Grants 2 - - 125,000 125,000 - - 125,000 125,000
Other trading activities 3 7,200 - - 7,200 33,160 - - 33,160
Total income 3,289,120 - 125,000 3,414,120 2,855,670 - 125,000 2,980,670
Expenditure on:
Raising funds 4 (499,984) (18,680) - (518,664) (523,598) (4,582) - (528,180)
Charitable activities 4 (3,821,143) (138,010) (250,000) (4,209,153) (4,461,073) (34,279) - (4,495,352)
Total expenditure (4,321,127) (156,690) (250,000) (4,727,817) (4,984,671) (38,861) - (5,023,532)
Net (defcit)/income (1,032,007) (156,690) (125,000) (1,313,697) (2,129,001) (38,861) 125,000 (2,042,862)
Net movement in funds (1,032,007) (156,690) (125,000) (1,313,697) (2,129,001) (38,861) 125,000 (2,042,862)
Fund balances brought forward 16 (11,113,250) 234,285 125,000 (10,753,965) (8,984,249) - - (8,984,249)
Long Term Loan Discounting Reserve 16 - 2,148,985 - 2,148,985 - 273,146 - 273,146
Fund balances carried forward 16 (12,145,257) 2,226,580 - (9,918,677) (11,113,250) 234,285 125,000 (10,753,965)

All amounts relate to continuing activities. There are no other gains or losses in the year other than those shown above.

The notes on pages 76 to 92 form part of these financial statements.

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GROUP AND CHARITY BALANCE SHEETS | AS AT 31 MAY 2025 | COMPANY REGISTRATION NUMBER: 11831773

----- Start of picture text -----
Group Group Charity Charity
2025 2024 2025 2024
As Restated As Restated
Note £ £ £ £
Fixed assets
Tangible assets 8 19,807 41,185 19,807 41,185
Investments 9 - - 1 1
19,807 41,185 19,808 41,186
Current assets
Debtors: amounts due after one year 10 - - - -
Debtors: amounts due within one year 10 714,688 613,814 714,688 624,458
Cash at bank and in hand 211,356 337,038 208,792 323,994
926,044 950,852 923,480 948,452
Current liabilities
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year 11 (4,385,056) (4,689,752) (4,381,555) (4,687,353)
Net current assets (3,459,012) (3,738,900) (3,458,075) (3,738,901)
Total assets less current liabilities (3,439,205) (3,697,715) (3,438,267) (3,697,715)
Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year 12 (6,479,472) (7,056,250) (6,479,472) (7,056,250)
Net (liabilities)/assets (9,918,677) (10,753,965) (9,917,739) (10,753,965)
Funds :
Resricted reserves 16 - 125,000 - 125,000
General reserves
Unrestricted funds 16 (12,145,257) (11,113,250) (12,144,319) (11,113,250)
Designated funds 16 2,226,580 234,285 2,226,580 234,285
Funds (9,918,677) (10,753,965) (9,917,739) (10,753,965)
----- End of picture text -----

These financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the special provisions of Part 15 of the Companies Act 2006 relating to small companies and in accordance with Financial Reporting Standard 102 the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

The total income for the year of the parent Charity was £3,406,920 (2024: £2,974,215) and its net deficit for the year was £(1,312,759) (2024 as restated: £(2,042,864) deficit).

The financial statements were approved by the Board of Trustees and signed on its behalf by:

Sir Ron Dennis CBE

Chairman

Date: 16 December 2025

The notes on pages 76 to 92 form part of these financial statements.

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CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025

----- Start of picture text -----
2024
2025 As Restated
£ £
Cash flows from operating activities
Net income / (expenditure) for the year (1,313,697) (2,042,862)
Adjustments for:
Depreciation 26,648 42,040
Loss on disposal of fixed assets 1,157 -
Conversion of loan to donation - -
(Increase) / Decrease in debtors (100,874) 86,997
(Decrease) / Increase in creditors (268,698) 311,836
Decrease in provision for grants payable (2,390,482) (874,275)
Notional interest on loans payable 156,690 38,861
Net cash (outflow) from operating activities (3,889,256) (2,437,403)
Cash flows from investing activities
Purchase of tangible fixed assets (6,425) (2,081)
Net cash (outflow) from investing activities (6,425) (2,081)
Cash flows from financing activities
Loans drawn 3,770,000 2,380,000
Net cash inflow from financing activities 3,770,000 2,380,000
Net (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents in the year (125,682) (59,484)
Cash and cash equivalents at 1 June 337,038 396,522
Cash and cash equivalents at 31 May 211,356 337,038
2025 2024
Analysis of cash and cash equivalents £ £
Cash at bank and in hand 211,356 337,038
Total 211,356 337,038
----- End of picture text -----

The notes on pages 76 to 92 form part of these financial statements.

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1. Accounting policies

Charity information

The charity is a company limited by guarantee and is incorporated and registered in England and Wales. Its registered office and principal place of business is 6 Grosvenor Street, London W1K 4PZ.

The formal objective of the Charity is to advance health for the public benefit in particular, but not exclusively by collecting, researching (including the publication of the useful results of such charitable research) and applying data to support the prevention and treatment of injuries in sport, particularly but not exclusively, youth and grassroots sport.

1.1 Accounting convention

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable

in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2019) and the Companies Act 2006.

Podium Analytics meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS

  1. Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant accounting policy.

The financial statements are prepared in sterling, which is the functional currency of the Charity. Monetary amounts in these financial statements are rounded to the nearest £.

1.2 Basis of consolidation

The consolidated financial statements incorporate the results of Podium Analytics (‘the Charity’) and its subsidiary undertakings. Subsidiary undertakings are consolidated on a lineby-line basis. The consolidated entity is referred to as ‘the Group’. No separate Statement of Financial Activities or Cash Flow Statement has been prepared for the Charity as permitted by section 408 of the Companies Act 2006 and FRS 102 Section 1.12 (b) respectively.

1.3 Going concern

At 31 May 2025, Podium Analytics had net liabilities of £9.9 million (2024 restated: £10.8 million net liabilities) as described above, and net current liabilities of £3.5 million (2024: net liabilities of £3.7 million) at the balance sheet date, inclusive of payments due

to the University of Oxford in the next 12 months. At the balance sheet date, Podium Analytics held cash of £0.2 million. Podium Analytics has an active fundraising programme, which generated £3.4 million in the 2024/25 financial year, as well as plans to diversify income.

In addition, since May 2025 Podium has received a further £3.0 million in loan funding from an entity related to a Trustee. All of Podium’s loans have a repayment date of November 2034. This, together with anticipated future income and the ability to manage expenditure as appropriate, provides assurance that Podium Analytics will continue to have access to sufficient liquid resources to meet its obligations as they fall due. A Trustee has also provided a commitment to support the costs of the charity for the coming 12 months.

The Trustees have reviewed financial forecasts beyond a period of 12 months from the approval of the financial

statements. This included an assessment of budgets, business plans and cash flow forecasts. As a result of this review, the Trustees have a reasonable expectation that the Charity has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future. As a consequence, they continue to adopt

the going concern basis in preparing the annual accounts.

1.4 Charitable funds

Unrestricted funds are available for use at the discretion of the Trustees in furtherance of the charitable objectives.

1.5 Income

Income is recognised when the Charity is legally entitled to it after any performance conditions have been met, the amounts can be measured reliably, and it is probable that income will be receive.

Donations and grants are recognised when there is evidence of entitlement to the gift, receipt is probable and its amount can be measured reliably

Sponsorship and similar commercial income is recognised on an accruals basis in accordance with the substance of the relevant agreement. Income received in advance is carried forward as deferred income.

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1.6 Expenditure

Expenditure is recognised once there is a legal or constructive obligation to make payment to a third party, it is probable that settlement will be required and the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably.

All expenditure is accounted for on an accruals basis. All expenses including governance costs are allocated to applicable expenditure headings

Expenditure on raising funds includes the salaries and overhead costs of the staff who undertake fundraising activities, costs identifiable as arising directly from fundraising activities, and the costs incurred by trading activities.

Expenditure on charitable activities includes costs identifiable as arising directly from the delivery of the Charity’s programmes of charitable work.

Support costs, which are costs that cannot be directly attributed to a particular activity, are allocated to expenditure on raising funds and charitable activities on the basis of the time spent on each activity involved with fundraising and charitable work.

Irrecoverable VAT is charged against the expenditure heading for which it was incurred.

1.7 Operating leases

Rentals payable under operating leases are charged to the statement of financial activities on a straight-line basis over the period of the lease. Any lease incentives (such as rent free periods) are spread over the life of the lease.

1.8 Tangible fixed assets

Tangible fixed assets are initially measured at cost and subsequently measured at cost net of depreciation and any impairment losses.

Depreciation is calculated on a straight line basis. The costs of fixed assets are written off over their useful lives at the following rates:

Depreciation is not commenced until the assets are completed and ready for use.

The gain or loss arising on the disposal of an asset is determined as the difference between the sale proceeds and the carrying value of the asset, and is recognised in the statement of financial activities for the year.

1.9 Impairment of fixed assets

At each reporting end date, the Charity reviews the carrying amounts of its tangible assets to determine whether there is any indication that those assets have suffered an impairment loss.

If any such indication exists, the recoverable amount of the asset is estimated in order to determine the extent of the impairment loss (if any).

1.10 Cash and cash equivalents

Cash and cash equivalents include cash in hand, deposits held at call with banks and other short-term liquid investments with original maturities of three months or less.

1.11 Financial instruments

The Charity has elected to apply the provisions of Section 11 ‘Basic Financial Instruments’ and Section 12 ‘Other Financial Instruments Issues’ of FRS 102 to all of its financial instruments

Financial instruments are recognised in the Charity’s balance sheet when the Charity becomes party to the contractual provisions of the instrument.

Financial assets and liabilities are offset, with the net amounts presented in the financial statements, when there is a legally enforceable right to set off the recognised amounts and there is an intention to settle on a net basis or to realise the asset and settle the liability simultaneously.

Basic financial assets

Basic financial assets, which include debtors and cash and bank balances, are initially measured at transaction price including transaction costs and are subsequently carried at amortised cost using the effective interest method unless the arrangement constitutes a financing transaction, where the transaction is measured at the present value of the future receipts discounted at a market rate of interest.

Financial assets classified as receivable within one year are not amortised.

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS CONTINUED | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025

Basic financial liabilities

Basic financial liabilities, including creditors and other loans are initially recognised at transaction price unless the arrangement constitutes a financing transaction, where the debt instrument is measured at the present value of the future payments discounted at a market rate of interest. Financial liabilities classified as payable within one year are not amortised.

Debt instruments are subsequently carried at amortised cost, using the effective interest rate method.

Trade creditors are obligations to pay for goods or services that have been acquired in the ordinary course of operations from suppliers. Amounts payable are classified as current liabilities if payment is due within one year or less. If not, they are presented as non-current liabilities.

Trade creditors are recognised initially at transaction price and subsequently measured at amortised cost using the effective interest rate method.

Derecognition of financial liabilities

Financial liabilities are derecognised when the Charity’s contractual obligations expire or are discharged or cancelled.

1.12 Grant awards

Grants awarded are included within charitable expenditure when the award of the grant is committed, unconditional and has been communicated to the recipient.

All grant provisions in excess of one year are discounted to net present value. The discount rate used to determine the net present value is calculated in reference to UK Gilt yields at the balance sheet date, weighted to reflect the expected phasing of future grant payments. The discount rate applied at 31 May 2025 was 4.035% (2024: 4.317%).

1.13 Taxation

The Charity is considered to pass the tests set out in Paragraph 1 Schedule 6 of the Finance Act 2010 and therefore it meets the definition of a charitable company for UK corporation tax purposes. Accordingly the Charity is potentially exempt from taxation in respect of income or capital gains received within categories covered by Chapter 3 Part 11 of the Corporation Tax Act 2010 or Section 256 of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992 to the extent that such income or gains are applied exclusively to its charitable purposes.

1.14 Pension

The Charity operates a defined contribution pension scheme and the pension charge represents the amounts payable by the Charity to the fund in respect of the year.

1.15 Debtors

Debtors are recognised at the settlement amount due.

1.16 Creditors

Creditors are recognised where the Charity has a present obligation resulting from a past event that will probably result in the transfer of funds to a third party and the amount due to settle the obligation can be measured or estimated reliably. Creditors are normally recognised at their settlement amount.

1.17 Funds

General funds are unrestricted funds which are available for use at the discretion of the Trustees in furtherance of the general objectives of the company and which have not been designated for other purposes.

Designated funds comprise unrestricted funds that have been set aside by the Trustees for particular purposes. The aim and use of each designated fund is set out in the notes to the financial statements.

Restricted funds are funds which are to be used in accordance with specific restrictions imposed by donors or which have been raised by the company for particular purposes. The costs of raising and administering such funds are charged against the specific fund. The aim and use of each restricted fund is set out in the notes to the financial statements.

2. Judgement and Key estimation

Loans payable are measured at the present value of expected future cash flows, discounted using an estimated discount rate. This discount rate reflects current market interest rates and the borrower’s credit risk, and is subject to management’s judgement. Changes in the discount rate or in estimated future cash flows can materially affect the carrying value of these loans. Management regularly reviews these assumptions to ensure the loans are fairly stated.

3. Prior Year Restatement

The charity has restated the comparative figures for the year ended 31 May 2024 and its brought forward reserves as at 1 May 2025. An explanation of the adjustment, together with the financial impact is set out in Note 19.

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS CONTINUED | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025

2. Income from donations and grants 2025 2025 2025 2024 2024 2024
Unrestricted Restricted Total Unrestricted Restricted Total
funds funds funds funds funds funds
£ £ £ £ £ £
Donations 3,281,920 - 3,281,920 2,822,510 - 2,822,510
Grants - 125,000 125,000 - 125,000 125,000
Total Donations and Grants 3,281,920 125,000 3,406,920 2,822,510 125,000 2,947,510
3. Income from other trading activities 2025 2024
Unrestricted funds Unrestricted
funds
£ £
Sponsorship income - 17,500
Contract income 7,200 10,800
Other income - 4,860
Total Income from other trading activities 7,200 33,160

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS CONTINUED | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025

----- Start of picture text -----
4. Total Expenditure Direct Grant funding Support Total Total
costs of activities costs 2025 2024
As restated
£ £ £ £ £
Expenditure on raising funds
Donations 415,849 - 102,815 518,664 528,180
415,849 - 102,815 518,664 528,180
Expenditure on charitable activities
Research and education 3,331,727 - 723,525 4,055,252 3,992,881
Collaboration and impact 117,803 - 36,098 153,901 502,471
3,449,530 - 759,623 4,209,153 4,495,352
Total expenditure 3,865,379 - 862,438 4,727,817 5,023,532
Analysis of support costs Research Collaboration Raising Total Total
and education and impact funds 2025 2024
As restated
£ £ £ £ £
Finance, legal and executive 425,768 21,242 60,503 507,513 709,663
Human resources 125,056 6,238 17,771 149,065 95,305
Information Technology 90,287 4,505 12,830 107,622 100,252
Communications 7,050 352 1,002 8,404 18,214
Facilities 58,137 2,901 8,261 69,299 73,621
Governance 17,227 860 2,448 20,535 15,330
Total 723,525 36,098 102,815 862,438 1,012,385
----- End of picture text -----

All support costs are allocated to the activities above based on the time spent on each of those activities.

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS CONTINUED | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025

----- Start of picture text -----
5. Employees 2025 2024
Employment costs £ £
Wages and salaries 1,457,573 1,484,878
Social security costs 185,549 183,817
Pension costs 66,909 62,827
Total 1,710,031 1,731,522
The average number of employees during the year was: 2025 2024
Total 16 16
Total number of employees at 31 May 2025 was 17 (2024: 16).
The following number of staff have emoluments over £60,000: 2025 2024
Between £60,000 - £69,999 4 2
Between £70,000 - £79,999 2 1
Between £80,000 - £89,999 0 1
Between £90,000 - £99,999 0 1
Betweeen £100,000 - £109,999 1 0
Betweeen £110,000 - £119,999 1 1
Betweeen £120,000 - £129,999 0 1
Betweeen £200,000 - £209,999 1 1
Betweeen £290,000 - £299,999 1 1
Total 10 9
----- End of picture text -----

The charity’s senior management team comprises those listed on page 65, who are responsible for the operational management of the organisation. For the purposes of the financial statements, only those members who have authority for planning, directing and controlling the charity’s activities are classified as key management personnel, in accordance with FRS 102.

The total remuneration (including employer’s national insurance contributions and pension contributions) paid in respect of key management personnel for the year was £1,044,147 (2024: £966,574).

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS CONTINUED | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025

6. Trustees

During the year, the Charity received donations from Trustees or entities related to the Trustees of £3,131,675 (2024: £1.9m).

The Charity has borrowed a total of £6.15m (2024: £2.38m) pursuant to a loan consolidation agreement with the lender, an entity under common trusteeship with Podium Analytics.

The loan is measured at present value, discounted using a discount rate equivalent to the 10-year bond yield. Interest expense recognised in the Statement of Financial Activities (SOFA) for the year amounted to £156,690 (2024: £38,861).

None of the Trustees (or any persons connected with them) received any remuneration or benefits from the charity during the period other than as disclosed above.

7. Net income/(expenditure) for the year
7. Net income/(expenditure) for the year 2025 2024
Net income/(expenditure) for the year is stated after charging/(crediting): £ £
Depreciation of tangible fxed assets 26,648 42,040
Operating lease payments recognised as an expense 259,824 249,481
Auditor's remuneration 20,535 15,330

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8. Tangible fxed assets Leasehold Fixtures, fttings Computers Total
improvements & equipment
Group and Charity
£ £ £ £
Cost
At 1 June 2024 49,174 74,797 74,068 198,039
Additions - - 6,425 6,425
Disposals - - (1,682) (1,682)
At 31 May 2025 49,174 74,797 78,811 202,782
Accumulated depreciation
At 1 June 2024 38,519 71,054 47,281 156,854
Depreciation charged in the year 9,835 2,432 14,380 26,647
Disposals - - (526) (526)
At 31 May 2025 48,354 73,486 61,135 182,975
Net book value
At 31 May 2025 820 1,311 17,676 19,807
At 31 May 2024 10,655 3,743 26,787 41,185

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9. Investments 2025 2024
Charity £ £
Investment in subsidiaries 1 1
Total investments at 31 May 1 1

The Charity holds a 100% shareholding in one (2024: one) subsidiary undertaking within the Group.

This is valued at cost of £1 (2024: £1) (see note 15).

10. Debtors Group Group Charity Charity
2025 2024 2025 2024
£ £ £ £
Amounts due within one year
Trade debtors - 10,800 - -
Other debtors 325,335 317,375 325,335 316,975
Prepayments 389,353 285,639 389,353 285,639
Amounts owed by group undertakings - - - 21,844
Total debtors due within one year 714,688 613,814 714,688 624,458
Amounts due after one year
Other debtors - - - -
Total debtors due after one year - - - -

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11. Creditors: amounts falling due within one year Group Group Charity Charity
2025 2024 2025 2024
£ £ £ £
Trade creditors 268,276 211,896 268,276 209,497
Other creditors 25,588 12,826 25,588 12,826
Accruals 109,879 447,719 106,377 447,719
Grants payable (note 13) 3,981,313 4,017,311 3,981,313 4,017,311
Amounts owed by group undertakings - - 1 -
Total creditors falling due within one year 4,385,056 4,689,752 4,381,555 4,687,353
12. Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year 2025 2024
As restated
Group and Charity £ £
Loans 3,923,420 2,145,715
Grants payable – in two to fve years (note 13) 2,556,052 4,910,535
Total creditors falling due after more than one year 6,479,472 7,056,250

Grants payable in two to five years represents committed funding for the initial period of the Podium Analytics Institute for Youth Sports Medicine at Technology at the University of Oxford, discounted at the 2 year UK gilt rate (2024: 3 year UK gilt rate).

During the year, pursuant to a loan consolidation agreement with the lender, the loans were re-termed to a 2034 maturity. The loans are measured at present value, discounted using a discount rate equivalent to the 10-year bond yield. The present value of the loans is sensitive to discount rate used. As at 31 May 2025, a 1% increase in the discount rate would reduce the present value of the loans by £338,154. Interest expense recognised in the Statement of Financial Activities (SOFA) for the year amounted to £156,690 (2024: £38,861).

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13. Grants payable Research and education 2025 2024
Total Total
Group and Charity £ £ £
Grants committed in the year - - 233,275
Grant discount 306,179 306,179 259,750
Net grants committed as recognised in the statement of fnancial activities 306,179 306,179 493,025
Paid during the year (2,696,660) (2,696,660) (1,367,300)
Net movement in grants payable during the year (2,390,481) (2,390,481) (874,275)
Grants payable at 1 June 8,927,846 9,802,121
Grants payable at 31 May 6,537,365 8,927,846
Grants payable – due within one year 3,981,313 4,017,311
Grants payable – due within two to fve years 2,556,052 4,910,535
Grants payable at 31 May 6,537,365 8,927,846

Grants committed in the year ended 31 May 2024 represents committed funding to the University of Bath over a two year period in respect of its Adolescent Growth Project.

Grants committed in the year ended 31 May 2022 represents committed funding to the University of Oxford over an initial six year period in respect of the Podium Analytics Institute for Youth Sports Medicine and Technology, with funding for the extended period to be agreed following a quinquennial review.

It should be noted that the cash payment profile of this funding is phased annually across the initial 6-year period, with cash payments over the next 2 years of £3.9 million and £2.7 million per annum. Therefore, whilst the accounting treatment of the grant resulted in a deficit in the year ended May 2022, this will unwind over the initial period of the Institute and importantly the cash flows are spread across this period and will be matched by income to be recognised in future periods.

The Charity has discounted its long-term grant liabilities. A discount rate of 4.035% (2024: 4.317%) has been applied to the amounts recognised in the financial statements as grants payable. The discount rate applied is the UK two year Gilt rate (2024: the UK three year Gilt rate)

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS CONTINUED | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025

14. Operating Leases

At 31 May, the Group had total commitments under non-cancellable operating leases as follows:

2025 2024
£ £
Within one year 160,849 141,304
Between two and fve years - -
After fve years - -
Total 160,849 141,304

15. Subsidiary undertakings

Podium Analytics has one wholly owned non-charitable subsidiary undertaking registered in England and Wales, which is consolidated. The registered address for this subsidiary undertaking is 6 Grosvenor Street, London, W1K 4PZ.

Company name: Podium Applied Technologies Limited Registered company number: 13232671 Holding: 100% Activities: Income generation

This subsidiary was incorporated on 27 February 2021. It has share capital of 1 ordinary share of £1.

The fnancial results of the subsidiary recognised in the Group fnancial statements, were: Podium Applied Technologies Limited Podium Applied Technologies Limited
2025 2024
£ £
Income 7,200 28,300
Expenditure (8,136) (26,135)
(Loss)/proft for the period (936) 2,165
Distribution to parent - (2,165)
Assets 2,565 24,245
Liabilities (3,500) (24,244)
Net assets (935) 1

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----- Start of picture text -----
16. Movement in funds As Restated Designated fund Incoming Resources Total
funds on discounting loan resources expended
2025 £ £ £ £ £
Unrestricted funds (Group) (11,113,250) - 3,289,120 (4,321,127) (12,145,257)
Unrestricted funds (Charity) (11,113,250) - 3,281,920 (4,312,989) (12,144,319)
Designated funds (Group) 234,285 2,148,985 - (156,690) 2,226,580
Designated funds (Charity) 234,285 2,148,985 - (156,690) 2,226,580
Restricted funds (Group) 125,000 - 125,000 (250,000) -
Restricted funds (Charity) 125,000 - 125,000 (250,000) -
2024 £ £ £ £ £
As restated
Unrestricted funds (Group) (8,984,249) - 2,855,670 (4,984,671) (11,113,250)
Unrestricted funds (Charity) (8,984,247) - 2,849,215 (4,978,218) (11,113,250)
Designated funds (Group) - 273,146 - (38,861) 234,285
Designated funds (Charity) - 273,146 - (38,861) 234,285
Restricted funds (Group) - - 125,000 - 125,000
Restricted funds (Charity) - - 125,000 - 125,000
----- End of picture text -----

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION TRUSTEES’ REPORT AUDITOR’S REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS ADMIN DETAILS

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS CONTINUED | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025

17. Analysis of net assets between funds 2025 2025 2025 2025 2024 2024 2024 2024
Unrestricted Designated Restricted Total As restated As restated As restated As restated
funds funds funds funds Unrestricted Designated Restricted Total
funds funds funds funds
Group £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £
Tangible assets 19,807 - - 19,807 41,185 - - 41,185
Current assets 926,044 - - 926,044 825,852 - 125,000 950,852
Current liabilities (4,385,056) - - (4,385,056) (4,689,752) - - (4,689,752)
Long-term liabilities (8,706,052) 2,226,580 - (6,479,472) (7,290,535) 234,285 - (7,056,250)
Total net (liabilities) / assets as at 31 May (12,145,257) 2,226,580 - (9,918,677) (11,113,250) 234,285 125,000 (10,753,965)
Charity
Tangible assets 19,807 - - 19,807 41,185 - - 41,185
Investments 1 - - 1 1 - - 1
Current assets 923,480 - - 923,480 823,452 - 125,000 948,452
Current liabilities (4,381,555) - - (4,381,555) (4,687,353) - - (4,687,353)
Long-term liabilities (£8,706,052) 2,226,580 - (6,479,472) (7,290,535) 234,285 - (7,056,250)
Total net (liabilities) / assets as at 31 May (£12,144,319) 2,226,580 - (£9,917,739) (11,113,250) 234,285 125,000 (10,753,965)

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CONTENTS INTRODUCTION TRUSTEES’ REPORT

AUDITOR’S REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS ADMIN DETAILS

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS CONTINUED | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025

18. Analysis of changes in net debt At 1 June Cash fow Increase in Discounting Interest on At 31 May
2024 Short Term of Long Term Long Term 2025
As Restated Loans Loans Loans
Group and Charity
2025 £ £ £ £ £ £
Cash at bank and in hand 337,038 (125,682) - - - 211,356
Long term borrowings (2,145,715) - (3,770,000) 2,148,985 (156,690) (3,923,420)
Net debt (1,808,677) (125,682) (3,770,000) 2,148,985 (156,690) (3,712,064)
At 1 June Cash fow Increase in Discounting Interest on At 31 May
2023 Short Term of Long Term Long Term 2024
Loans Loans Loans
2024 £ £ £ £ £ £
As restated
Cash at bank and in hand 396,522 (59,484) - 337,038
Current borrowings - - (2,380,000) 273,146 (38,861) (2,145,715)
Net debt 396,522 (59,484) (2,380,000) 273,146 (38,861) (1,808,677)

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

TRUSTEES’ REPORT

AUDITOR’S REPORT

FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

ADMIN DETAILS

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS CONTINUED | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025

19. Prior Year Adjustment

A prior year adjustment has been made to discount the loan classified within Creditors: Amounts falling due after more than one year, which should have been discounted using an appropriate discount rate in accordance with the charity’s accounting policies. The gross loan balance of £2,380,000 had a present value of £2,145,715 as at 31 May 2024. This results in a loan discounting reserve of £234,285, representing the difference between the gross loan amount and its discounted present value.

Additionally, interest of £38,861 should have been recognised in the prior year relating to the unwinding of the discount on the loan.

The impact of the restatement on the comparative amounts as presented in the prior year financial statements is detailed below:

Changes to the balance sheet
Creditors: amounts falling due after more than one year		 Group at 31 May 2024
As previously
reported
Adjustment
As restated
£
£
£
2,380,000
(234,285)
2,145,715
4,910,535
-
4,910,535
7,290,535
(234,285)
7,056,250		 Charity at 31 May 2024
As previously
reported
Adjustment
As restated
£
£
£
Loans
Grants payable - in two to fve years		 2,380,000
(234,285)
2,145,715
4,910,535
-
4,910,535
7,290,535
(234,285)
7,056,250

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

TRUSTEES’ REPORT

AUDITOR’S REPORT

FINANCIAL STATEMENTS ADMIN DETAILS

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS CONTINUED | FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MAY 2025

Group Group Charity Charity
1 June 2023 31 May 2024 1 June 2023 31 May 2024
Reconciliation of funds £ £ £ £
Restricted reserves - 125,000 - 125,000
General reserves (8,984,249) (11,113,250) (8,984,249) (11,113,250)
Funds as previously reported (8,984,249) (10,988,250) (8,984,249) (10,988,250)
Adjustments to prior year
Adjustment for discounting loan 234,285 234,285
Restricted reserves - 125,000 - 125,000
General reserves (8,984,249) (11,113,250) (8,984,249) (11,113,250)
Other reserves (discounting reserve) - 234,285 - 234,285
Funds as adjusted (8,984,249) (10,753,965) (8,984,249) (10,753,965)
Reconciliation of changes in consolidated statement of fnancial activities 2024
for the previous fnancial period £
Net movement in funds as previously reported (2,004,001)
Adjustments to prior year
Adjustment for discounting loan (38,861)
Net movement in funds as adjusted (2,042,862)

20. Events after the reporting period

There were no events after the reporting period.

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INTRODUCTION TRUSTEES’ REPORT AUDITOR’S REPORT FINANCIAL STATEMENTS ADMIN DETAILS

REFERENCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS | PODIUM ANALYTICS

Trustees

Sir Ron Dennis CBE (Chair)

Peter Hamlyn MBBS BSc MD FRCS FISM Robin Fenwick Kristina Murrin CBE Donald Mackenzie Sir Anthony Seldon (appointed 16 January 2025)

Chief Executive Officer

Andy Hunt

Company Secretary James McAllister

Registered Office and Principal Address

Podium Analytics 6 Grosvenor Street London W1K 4PZ

Company Number 11831773

Charity Number 1183716

Bankers and Principal Advisors

Bankers

Barclays Bank PLC 1 Churchill Place London, E14 5HP

Legal Advisors

Pinsent Masons LLP 30 Crown Place Earl Street London, EC2A 4ES

Accountants

Blick Rothenberg Limited Chartered Accountants 16 Great Queen Street Covent Garden London, WC2B 5AH

Statutory Auditor Blick Rothenberg Audit LLP Chartered Accountants 16 Great Queen Street Covent Garden London, WC2B 5AH

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A company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales, No. 11831773

A registered charity in England and Wales, No. 1183716, and Scotland, No. SC051893