DUBLIN, Ireland, August 25, 2026 — The League of Ireland has today announced a multi-year, league-wide partnership with Kitman Labs®, the world’s leading performance intelligence company, to deploy iP: Intelligence Platform across the 22 League of Ireland Academies.
The agreement is one of the most comprehensive league-wide football intelligence deployments in Europe to date. It establishes the League of Ireland as the league-level administrator of a single, longitudinal data infrastructure spanning every LOI Academy, and every level of the Irish football pathway.
This is the latest development in the League of Ireland Academy Investment Programme funded by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport and Sport Ireland which has also seen a number of appointments of Academy Directors and Head of Academy Coaching roles throughout LOI Academies.
In the new partnership, the League of Ireland sets the standards centrally; each Club retains day-to-day autonomy operating inside that framework, on the same platform.
Through the partnership, the League of Ireland will use iP: Intelligence Platform to:
- Govern the LOI ecosystem from a dedicated league-level workspace, with controlled cross-Club visibility for League of Ireland senior staff
- Automate the LOI grading framework and the academy improvement action plans tied to it, replacing manual spreadsheet evidence-gathering with real-time governance and audit-ready records
- Centralize the LOI football philosophy, curriculum, coaching standards and drill library, with alignment tracked at every developmental level across every Club
- Provide every LOI Club with Club Operations for scheduling, communications, participation tracking, forms, documents and day-to-day coordination, delivered as part of the same platform
- Deliver robust, self-service reporting and visualization through My iP, the platform’s analytics layer, with the League of Ireland and every LOI Club able to configure dashboards natively
- Operate a single longitudinal record for each player, tracking their development throughout the LOI Academy pathway and supporting their progression towards senior professional football.
- Equip every player, parent and coach with a dedicated app to access their schedule, communicate with Club staff, input pathway data, and track development progress
The agreement is league-wide and all-Clubs-included by design. Every LOI Club is provisioned as a fully featured Club workspace with role-based access for academy directors, coaches, performance, sports science, medical, analysts, operations and welfare staff. Implementation, training, onboarding and 24/7 in-application support are included at every level.
“Today represents a genuine step-change in how we develop young players across the League of Ireland” said Will Clarke, Head of League of Ireland Academies.
“Our ambition is to give every player within our Academy system the best possible opportunity to fulfill their potential. For the first time, we will have a single, connected platform across our Academies that allows us to follow a player’s development over time, better understand their individual needs and give our Clubs and coaches the information they need to support that development.
The real value of this investment will ultimately be measured on the pitch. If we develop better players, we strengthen our Clubs. If we strengthen our Clubs, we strengthen the League of Ireland. And, over time, a stronger League of Ireland Academy system will provide more and better players for our international teams.
The recent independent review of our Academy system provided us with an important evidence base and identified a number of areas where we needed to improve, including greater digitalization, better use of player data and technology, and a more consistent approach across our Academies. I’d like to thank Minister Patrick O’Donovan and Minister Charlie McConalogue as well as Sport Ireland for their support in delivering the funding which has allowed us to implement this world-class platform which will be a significant development for the future of Irish football.”
At the center of the partnership is iP: Intelligence Platform, Kitman Labs’ enterprise-grade operating system for sport. It is the only platform natively built to govern a football ecosystem from the governing body down, capturing medical, performance, talent identification, education, welfare and league administration data into a single, continuously updated intelligence layer with role-based access at every level. The platform is cloud-native and GDPR-aligned, with safeguarding workflows built in across the football pathway from youth to elite professional level. Reporting, visualization and analytics are delivered through My iP, the platform’s self-service analytics layer, allowing the League of Ireland and every LOI Club to build, share and act on their own dashboards without external configuration.
The League of Ireland partnership extends Kitman Labs’ position as the league-level system of record for the most demanding football and major-league sport ecosystems in the world. Kitman Labs powers the Premier League Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) across 92 academies, the multi-tier structure of Major League Soccer and MLS NEXT across more than 1,000 Clubs, and the league-wide health and safety program of all 32 NFL franchises. The announcement follows the recently expanded league-wide deployment across the United Soccer League (USL) ahead of the launch of USL Premier. It also comes on the heels of new federation and youth-pathway partnerships with the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) and the United Premier Soccer League (UPSL), continuing Kitman Labs’ expansion across the youth-to-professional football pathway.
“The League of Ireland has set out a clear ambition: to raise the standard of Irish football, to evidence outcomes to government, and to deliver lasting value from the public investment behind the game,” said Stephen Smith, Founder and CEO of Kitman Labs.
“By establishing a single intelligence platform across the Academy system and the league, the League of Ireland is doing what the most progressive leagues in the world are now doing. It is governing the ecosystem with a single set of standards and a single data infrastructure, and giving every Club the tools to operate to that standard. We are proud to be the partner the League of Ireland has trusted to deliver it.”
The deployment will begin immediately, with phased league-wide rollout across the 2026 season.
About the League of Ireland (LOI)
The League of Ireland is the top tier of Irish football and dates back to the foundation of the Football Association of Ireland in 1921.
Originally established as just one division, the League of Ireland is made up of three senior competitions – the SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division, the SSE Airtricity Women’s Premier Division and the SSE Airtricity Men’s First Division and the League of Ireland Academy for MU14, MU15, MU17, WU17, MU20 and Women’s Development League competitions.
The League of Ireland has been administered within the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) since 2006. As such, the League benefits from the wide range of departments that exist within the FAI, including Commercial, Communications, Club Licensing, Legal, Finance, and IT.
The National League Committee (NLC) is the governing body of the League of Ireland and consists of an Independent Chairperson appointed by the FAI Board, an FAI Board Member and ten League of Ireland Club representatives.
The League of Ireland is governed by the Participation Agreement which the League Department, the NLC and the Clubs review and amend on an annual basis. Clubs are also required to obtain licenses to participate in either the Men’s and Women’s Premier Divisions or Men’s First Divisions.
About Kitman Labs
Kitman Labs is the world’s leading sports science and performance intelligence company. The company powers iP: Intelligence Platform, the advanced operating system used by the largest and most innovative leagues, teams, and governing bodies in elite sport.
Kitman Labs’ software solutions, Performance Medicine, Performance Optimization, Coaching & Development, and League Operations, are designed to optimize performance, enhance health and longevity, reduce injury risk, and drive operational efficiency and value. Kitman Labs works with more than 2,000 teams, leagues and federations across 26 countries, including the NFL, Premier League, MLS, NWSL, WSL, USL, NCAA, and NFF.
Kitman Labs is headquartered in Dublin.
Media Contacts
Kitman Labs, International
The PHA Group
kitmanlabs@thephagroup.com
