L’Alqueria del Basket is the largest basketball school in Europe. It opened up in September 2017 with the vision of becoming a worldwide reference and developing basketball in the Region of Valencia. The school has 15,000 m2 of facilities including 9 indoor and 4 outdoor courts. It is home for almost 600 players and 64 technical staff in 49 teams, 17 women and 32 men. L’Alqueria is a corner stone of a unique pole for the development of basketball in the region of Valencia. The Valencia basket club and a future Valencia Arena pavilion for 16,000 people audience are the other key elements of it.
This successful project launched last year as a key initiative for positioning Valencia as a worldwide basketball reference: L’Alqueria Basket Lab (LAB).
Open innovation approach
LAB is a new department for co-innovation with the main goal of promoting innovations that improve performance in any realm of basketball but also, fostering the socioeconomic development of society. It works in four fundamental pillars: Research, Education and training, Sharing experiences, Alliances within the sports innovation ecosystem. As Pedro Cotolí, coordinator of LAB, says: “We focus in the different transversal areas contributing to improving performance in basketball, medicine, physical training, physiotherapy, psychology and management.”
LAB follows an open innovation approach seeking for identifying, developing, testing and sharing ideas with stakeholders worldwide. With this respect, LAB is collaborating with entities like the Faculty of Science and Sports at the University of Valencia, the Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia, acting (altruistically) as a driver of R&D&I projects like Eyesport (funded by IVACE with SDR funds) aimed at applying Artificial Intelligence and image analysis for improving sportspeople health and performance.
For more information, visit L’ALQUERIA DEL BASKET webpage: https://www.alqueriadelbasket.com.
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