Bulgaria's Barin Sports attracts England football legend as investor

Owen will be both an investor and a special ambassador for the Bulgarian start-up, helping the company pursue its global market leader strategy, Barin Sports said in a press release, without providing further details.

"I firmly believe that the GPS system as well as the system for tracking the physical condition of athletes and compliance with tactical guidance have a huge potential. It is a revolution in the way we approach sports performance, training and injury prevention," Owen, who played for the England national team and a number of top European football clubs, said in the press release.

The partnership deal with Owen comes after the Bulgarian start-up last year became a portfolio company of the Capital Investments Fund (CIFund), a growth investment arm of the Bulgarian Development Bank (BDB), which committed capital of 4 million levs ($2.2 million/2.04 million euro) in support of the company's market expansion.

Founded in 2015, Barin Sports has developed a wearable tracking device that monitors a player's real-time physical condition and performance on the field, collecting data to review and improve the performance of individual players and the team. The start-up works with six teams from the professional football league and three sports academies, as well as Bulgaria's national men's football team.

(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)