Inside MLS All-Star Week: Why It’s a Hotspot for Sports Tech

The MLS All-Star Week is more than just a match, it’s one of the most strategic events in North American soccer. Held annually, the week brings together the league’s top talent and rising stars from MLS NEXT, but also creates a rare convergence of performance innovation, media exposure, and sports tech validation.

The 2025 edition, hosted in Austin, Texas, at Q2 Stadium, was especially significant. With the World Cup on the horizon and soccer’s footprint growing in the U.S., the event served as a high-stakes testing ground for the next wave of football innovation. Athletes, coaches, league executives, and tech founders all shared one field (literally and metaphorically), making it one of the rare moments where elite-level competition meets on-the-ground experimentation.

Beyond the All-Star Game itself, the week featured the MLS NEXT All-Star Game, the MLS Skill Challenge, the Future of Sports Showcase, and private activations with scouts, trainers, and product developers.

Lubu at MLS All-Star 2025: A Game-Changing Week in Austin

Lubu Technologies was honored to play a central role during MLS All-Star Week, participating in three key events that put our technology to the test on the field, under pressure, and in front of the entire ecosystem.

MLS NEXT Final: Many of the top academy players laced up with Lubu smart insoles during the competition. These rising stars represent the future of the league, and for the first time, coaches and performance staff had access to real-time biomechanical data during match play, including ground reaction forces, asymmetries, and fatigue metrics. It marked a significant step forward in how soccer and youth development is monitored and optimized.

MLS All-Star Game at Q2 Stadium: During the most high-profile matches of the year, elite players used our smart insoles inside their cleats. With the world watching, Lubu’s system captured the hidden data behind every kick, sprint, cut, and strike, bringing lab-grade insights into one of the most media-covered games in North American soccer, finally delivering metrics relevant for this sport, which has been limited to monitoring simple speed and distance till now.

Future of Sports Showcase: Handpicked by Major League Soccer as one of the most promising sport-tech startups globally, Lubu joined the official innovation showcase alongside pioneers in AI, data visualization, and wearable technology. The selection followed our participation in the MLS Innovation Lab cohort and highlighted our position as a key player in next-generation performance monitoring.

Across the week, we engaged with team physicians, athletic trainers, scouts, and league officials — all aligned around one clear truth: the future of soccer performance is data-driven, and it starts at the foot.

Why Soccer Innovation Is Booming in North America

Soccer is growing rapidly across North America — not just in audience numbers, but in dollars invested and technologies adopted. With the 2026 FIFA World Cup set to be co-hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, the region is seeing record interest from sponsors, clubs, and fans. FIFA has already confirmed it will be the largest World Cup in history, and that momentum is reshaping the ecosystem.

More than just hype, this shift is visible in real metrics: MLS attendance is rising, broadcast deals are going global (see Apple’s 10-year MLS deal), and youth participation is at an all-time high. European giants like Bayern Munich, Manchester City, and Juventus have opened academies or entered partnerships with North American teams, recognizing this as fertile ground for the next wave of talent.

At the same time, leagues like Major League Soccer (MLS) are embracing technology not as an add-on, but as a core driver of performance. From wearables to data science, MLS is helping define what the future of football will look like, and that future is built on insights from the ground up.

Why Lubu’s Smart Insoles Are 10 Years Ahead of the Game

It might sound anachronistic, but in 2025, most teams still rely on GPS to monitor performance. A technology originally developed to track the position of objects has been repurposed for elite sports, attempting to infer effort, load, or fatigue from basic location data.

It’s old-fashioned, but it was the best we had so far, as the best technologies for performance and injury prevention — like force plates or motion capture systems — are still confined in labs. Too big, too expensive, and completely disconnected from the reality of training and competition.

Lubu changes that. We’re introducing a new system that feels like it’s 10 years ahead — finally unlocking lab-grade gait analysis and force tracking inside the shoe, during real play. No more guessing based on speed and distance. We analyze what’s actually happening at the foot — the body’s foundation for movement, balance, and power.

And it goes even further. Lubu creates a live digital twin of each foot, tracking how players strike, push, plant, and interact with the ball. It’s the first time coaches can understand technical form and biomechanical patterns directly from the field, and actually act on that data.

All of this is done invisibly, without interfering with how the player moves. It’s non-invasive, portable, and simple to deploy, yet powerful enough to guide training programs, reduce injury risks, and accelerate rehab.

For the first time, performance monitoring starts where movement begins: at the foot.

The Future of Soccer Starts at the Foot

We’re grateful for the coverage, the conversations, and the trust we received throughout the week in Austin. From national broadcasts to sideline talks with coaches and scouts, one thing became clear: the industry is ready for what’s next.

For too long, the foot has been overlooked by mainstream sports technology — treated as a black box while all attention focused on torso-mounted sensors and video review. But performance starts from the ground up. And now, with Lubu, teams can finally see what happens at the source of every sprint, cut, and strike.

We’re not here to add another wearable. We’re here to change how the game is understood, through real data, from real movement, in real conditions.