What is Traits Insights?
TRAITS is a player profiling platform that supports all football experts – from sporting directors to coaches, scouts and analysts - to more meaningfully use data and analytics in their talent ID and development processes
Traits translates complex performance data into simple, intuitive player profiles that deliver insights everyone in your organisation can understand, in your football language, and aligned with your unique game model to impact your player recruitment and development
At Traits, our aim is to support you to implement ‘best-practice’ data & analytics processes in your organisation
The Traits Journey
“The Traits concept evolved from my PhD in Human Resource Analytics and has been developed and tested through real-world application in a range of top-performing organisations in global sport.”
- Dan Pelchen, Founder & CEO
2017 - 2020
The first Traits model was developed in Australian Rules Football at Collingwood Football Club in 2017, during founder Dan Pelchen’s time as a performance data analyst, while studying his PhD in Human Resource Analytics.
Impressed by the platform’s potential, Chelsea Football Club recruited Dan to implement Traits at Chelsea in 2018. The early Traits models were highly valued within global football as an opportunity to help empower decision makers to move beyond data/statistics and towards analysis that was consistent, specific, and meaningfully aligned with their football philosophy.
For more information on Traits’ origins, check out this Optus Sport article: The Aussie who joined Chelsea from the AFL and has an invention that could change world sport
2021 - 2022
Following his time at Chelsea, Dan committed to Traits full-time in 2021 as demand for the platform grew throughout global football.
The first formal Traits client was an English Football League club, who harnessed the platform to create their own bespoke approach to player profiling in the transfer market. From their first transfer window using Traits, two recognised ‘Traits players’ went on to be awarded as player of the season and runner-up in the 2021-2022 season.
The Traits Insights platform officially launched and went to market at the conclusion of the European Transfer Window in September 2022.
2023
2023 marked the first year of Traits in the market, and saw significant product and partner developments.
Traits was backed by leading VC fund Artesian and the platform was adopted by elite organisations across global football, cricket and Australian Rules within its first year.
Traits engaged in formal partnerships with Opta, Wyscout, StatsBomb and Champion Data, among others, as it established itself a key player in the sports analytics landscape
2024
Traits announced our partnership with APEX - an extensive community of professional athlete investors motivated to transform the world of sports - as one of the lead investments in their Impact Program.
Traits’ partnership with APEX is recognition of our continued rapid growth and buy-in from key Football stakeholders. Traits platforms are being heavily used by Clubs, Federations and Leagues and Agencies across Australia, the UK and Europe.
