Bodø/Glimt is looking to boost their commercial revenue by investing in technology and innovation, combining a new data infrastructure with EDGE Case Ventures, its tech partnership platform.
The initiative is designed to move the club beyond simply buying technology. Through EDGE, startups and established companies can develop, validate, and demonstrate products within the Bodø/Glimt ecosystem, while the club gains access to new technology, expertise, and new revenue streams.
“Data and AI is the next frontier where we intend to apply it,” says Alma Antonia Botten, Technology & Innovation Lead at Bodø/Glimt and CEO of EDGE Case Ventures AS.
At the centre of the strategy is a unified data lake being developed together with consultancy BearingPoint, bringing sporting and commercial operations together. Bodø/Glimt describes the data lake as the engine behind its wider technology strategy, with EDGE providing the way for partners to plug into the club and its data infrastructure.
The strategy reflects the club’s broader approach to competing without the financial resources available to Europe’s biggest teams. Bodø/Glimt describes its philosophy, “Vårres måte” (“Our Way”), as being built around identifying opportunities, focusing on performance, and challenging established ways of working. It now wants to apply that mindset to data and AI.
EDGE takes that philosophy into the commercial market. Technology partners can co-develop solutions across sporting operations, stadium and venue operations, commercial and fan engagement, media and administration, working with real users and real operational challenges.
A good example of how EDGE works in practice, beyond its established work with the sports-focused investment firm APEX and its portfolio companies, is the club’s co-development with startup Insitu.fit to bring medical and physical performance data together in a single environment.
The solution connects data from across the club’s existing systems, including training data, wearables, sensors, lab tests, medical information and contextual notes, making it easier to analyse information across sources rather than in isolation.
By combining machine learning with an embedded large language model and natural-language interaction, the platform can support different ways of working across the
sporting organisation. Coaches, clinicians and performance staff can explore data, build analyses and structure workflows in ways that reflect their individual roles and processes,
while still working from the same underlying information.
However, the proposition is set to become even more significant with the development of Bodø/Glimt’s new stadium, scheduled for completion at the end of 2027. The project has been one of the drivers behind the club’s decision to build a proper data platform, and creates an opportunity to introduce new technology as the venue develops.
The commercial model is also intended to extend beyond conventional sponsorship. Depending on the partnership, EDGE can involve revenue arrangements, discounted access
to technology, revenue sharing, royalties, equity participation, and, in selected cases, direct ownership stakes in ventures.
Technology companies can also gain a reference case for their products, with Bodø/Glimt offering opportunities around case studies, co-branded content, executive speaking and
access to its wider Nordic sports network.
For a club operating from a city of around 42,000 people above the Arctic Circle, the ambition is significant: to use technology and data not only to improve sporting and operational performance, but to create new commercial opportunities and establish Bodø/Glimt as a reference point for sports technology in the Nordic and European markets.