The top player in this industry is Catapult Sports, which has stolen the march on other sports performance outfits by locking in some of the biggest teams in the country – but its equipment and software is well beyond the means of the average football or soccer club. It's why Strange is focusing on the smaller leagues. "You can't use a wrist device in team games as it's not safe, so the idea was to place our Game Traka device between the players' shoulder blades. The software is used individually but you can collate it to get a total team performance – and we're retailing this at around $299." Strange says he has more than 100 local clubs signed up using the device – mainly those laying Australian Rules. The company at last report was well into raising $600,000 from angel investors to help take it to club land as far afield as the United States, Britain and South Africa. "The target market here is 1.8 million people – AFL, soccer, rugby and hockey players," says Strange. "In the US there's 31 million people playing those sports and in Europe and the UK, it's 54 million." Sport Performance Tracking has already made a mark among venture capitalists, recently winning a slot to present at Slush, a highly respected pitching conference in Helsinki where entrepreneurs and tech talents present to international investors.

SPT has been valued about $3 million, but Strange says it's the next level that matters. Slush will help it get noticed at the next stage – venture capital – but getting these players on board is an altogether much more difficult matter. Strange has already pitched SPT to venture capital firm Newmarket Capital but one of the firm's partners, James Douglas, says he needs to get a better understanding of the market potential and probably see more market traction before he would invest in SPT. But the VC firm is interested. "The business he has started is in a very good area," says Douglas. "There's lots of interest across a raft of demographics. Everyone's looking at data to help them with their performance, and William has found a niche within that." Douglas says venture capitalists are more likely to come on board once the company has progressed a little further. Strange would have to prove that he had an established and demonstrated business model, had significant market share ,and a "foothold" in at least one sport – most likely his initial target market, AFL. "We need to be able to say – this is the stage of technology, this is where it needs to get to and how the sector will evolve over next two to five years and this is how we're going to evolve in response for that. He's not yet there," Douglas says.

As Douglas points out, the VC industry typically wouldn't come in with anything less than a $3 million to $10 million cheque, but it needs to see a proven track record of sales and a technology that differentiates itself: "It has to be more than just GPS location tracking unit, he needs gyroscopes and accelerometers to get a richer data set," he says. Douglas sees global sports companies entering this semi-professional space, and if companies such as Catapult, Fusion and GP Sports are making their mark at a higher level, what's to stop them coming down the food chain? "This is a land grab," he says. "SPT has to get out there to get critical mass even if others like Catapult, Garmin, Nike and Adidas come in. He needs to be the software of choice." While Douglas sees potential for SPT to sell as many as 5 million to 10 million units of Game Traka, there needs to be the potential for even greater scaleability – something near the 50 million sales mark. Does this daunt Strange? "Not at all. We know how big this market is and how passionate people are about sport," Strange says.

"With our current clients also possessing the same passion for our product and the data it provides, we truly believe exporting the product will get us very close to these numbers." ​