There’s one thing that all 2024 state league football premiers have in common - Lumin Sports.

In fact, all six teams vying for the right to become premiers used Lumin Sports in their respective premiership tilts.

The Glenelg Football Club claimed the South Australian National Football League (SANFL) title.

In the Victorian Football League (VFL), that honour went to Werribee who won their first premiership in 31 years.

While in the west, Peel Thunder won the Western Australian Football League (WAFL) title.

So why do these teams trust Lumin, and what is it about the platform that allows Australia’s top football teams to climb the pinnacle.

The Switch-Cost Effect

Every club has its own systems and preferred platforms.

But when you have multiple platforms, there’s a cost associated when switching between each one – be it time, financial, or efficiency.

And there’s no quicker way to stifle athlete buy-in than having too many apps, according to Werribee’s premiership-winning High-Performance Manager, Gaetano Faranda.

‘’That was the feedback we got form players in 2023,’’ Faranda said.

‘’There were too many documents, too many links.’’

In 2024, Werribee decided to centralise its performance, medical and operations systems within Lumin.

‘’It's a one-stop shop, you're not sorting through files, you're not sorting through documents, you're not clicking between Google Docs then to Google Drive.’’

‘’It saves time, not just for ourselves, but also for players, because they’re not doing their RPE on one platform, then their wellness on a Google Doc, and then going to another Google Doc to do their match evaluation.’’

‘’And now with the strength platform as well, which we've signed up to, we’re going to be using one app to do everything.’’

Werribee also took full advantage of Lumin’s capacity to integrate data from external sources, including STATSports, Garmin, and Whoop.

One App. All Departments

Very few platforms have the capacity to service the diverse needs of each department within a football club, but according to Glenelg’s premiership-winning High-Performance Manager, Tom Stevens, Lumin does exactly that.

‘’Everyone uses it - players, coaches, high-performance staff, trainers, everyone,’’ Stevens said.

And that’s because Lumin’s suite of features include tools for performance, team operations, injury management, S&C programming, and communications.

‘’Game day reporting is massive with the coaches and then we've got our RPE and medical reports which our trainers utilise,’’ Stevens said.

‘’And for me, it's almost like having a personal assistant to be honest, because I can get to work, I can input my data, and within no time, I can communicate that to all of our athletes without using multiple different platforms.’’

As a result of using Lumin, Glenelg has been able to cut the number of platforms it was relying on to run its football department.

The athlete ‘buy-in’ conundrum

New tech is hard to rollout at the best of times, especially to an athlete cohort that is constantly being asked to do more.

So how did Werribee and Glenelg do it so successfully?

‘’We said, ‘If we're going to do this, we're going to do it properly’ and it's going to be one of the centrepieces of how we know if we're sticking together and holding,’’ Stevens said.

‘’We make sure it's a point of emphasis at the start of the preseason and once I have my say it’s all player-driven.’’

‘’I’ll send a report to players on how we are tracking with it and the players then lead that throughout the year.’’

It's a similar story at Werribee where it comes from the top, but is then driven by the leadership group.

‘’I guess last year it was handy having a coach who was quite modern in his coaching practices and quite understanding of sports science, so he really pushed the use of the athlete management system,’’ Faranda said.

‘’This year we had a coach who had experience with Lumin elsewhere and valued the product and he pretty much helped drive it and just said it was compulsory – no ifs, buts or maybes and the leaders got on board.’’

Looking ahead to the 2025 state league seasons, Lumin Sports will be used by 7 SANFL teams, 4 VFL teams and 6 WAFL teams.