Technology Partnership to Digitise Lifesaving World Championships

The 2024 LWC Local Organising Committee are thrilled to share this announcement from Live Heats!

For the first time ever, the Lifesaving World Championships will be going fully digital.

The LWC 2024 Local Organising Committee, led by Chairman and Project Director, Ron Rankin AM have played a major role in spear-heading this new partnership based on the event’s vision to create the most inclusive, best-attended and inspirational Lifesaving World Championships.

“The participants’ experience is paramount and will be like no other when we bring the Lifesaving World Championships to the Gold Coast in 2024.”, said Mr Rankin AM.

“We are thrilled to see that our driving of this initiative will result in a long-term improvement for ILS events – a significant legacy that LWC24 will be leaving behind.  For the first time ILS will have an end to end system solution for all ocean and pool competitions. ”

Participants will be able to register, check schedules, see LIVE results and get links to other important information, all through the one single platform.

Officials will use the same system for all marshalling and point scoring, creating a seamless solution for the entire event.

Early registrations are expected to go live mid-2023 – stay tuned for more news and announcements! Read more about the partnership announcement from Live Heats, below.

Live Heats Announcement

The International Life Saving Federation (ILS) and Australian sports technology company LiveHeats have signed a six-year technology partnership to bring LiveHeats’ innovative sports technology solutions to the next three Lifesaving World Championships – 2024, 2026 and 2028.

The Lifesaving World Championships brings together more than 7,500 competitors and officials from over 50 countries every two years. The 2024 event, to be held on the Gold Coast, will be the first to roll-out the LiveHeats platform for registrations, payments, marshalling, draws, live results, and point scores.

LiveHeats solutions’ for Surf Life Saving have been developed via a collaboration between LiveHeats and Surf Life Saving Queensland, Surf Life Saving NSW, and Surf Life Saving Australia.

It first showcased its near field communication (NFC) wearables at the 2020 Queensland Endurance championships, which has now powered over 100 competitions across Australia and South Africa.

ILS will issue LiveHeats’ NFC-enabled wearables to athletes (pictured below), which are scanned by officials using smartphones to automate marshalling, draw creation, live results capture, and point scores.


As part of the partnership, LiveHeats will develop a range of new features for surf life saving’s competition formats; including integration with timing hardware for Pool Rescue events, a round robin system for Surf Boats, and team member roles for IRB races.

ILS Event Director John Martin MBE said the ILS strives to work with the best technical systems to manage the World Championships.

“We are delighted to have partnered with the award-winning LiveHeats team to provide an end-to-end competition entry, management and results platform for the next Lifesaving World Championships in 2024 on the Gold Coast, and beyond,” said Martin.

“With the use of the latest technology, we believe we can transform how we manage our events in future.”

The partnership marks a milestone for the Australian tech company, said Co-founder and CEO, Chris Friend. “To have the opportunity to work with the ILS over six years is a very encouraging step for us and we’re very grateful for the support from our partners in the Australian Surf Life Saving community for helping us build out a best-in-class platform,” said Friend