Comment: Looking back, part 1 - February 2008  

Representatives from a selection of sports properties were asked to cast their minds back to when S&T was just a baby and answer the question: ‘Which technology has had the most impact on sport in the last five years?’

Marius Schneider, head of information services, communications division, FIFA

“Chicago, 17 June 1994: Millions of soccer fans are undergoing the torment of watching Germany versus Bolivia, one of those FIFA World Cup opening games that are impossible to tell apart and always end goalless or in a drab 1-0 win. With an hour gone, a certain Jurgen Klinsmann finds the net, much to the relief of the holders. On the periphery, everything is functioning just as you would expect it to in the IT world of the 1990s. FIFA is doing what is necessary in organisational and administrative terms, the Local Organising Committee (LOC) is overseeing an information system that journalists can access via terminals at the media centres, and the host broadcaster is doing its best to convey the blessings of soccer to a critical American audience, visually and otherwise. The work of the print media is still heavily paper-based; we are in the era of the fax machine. Only a few have e-mail, and the internet is something for freaks, of which there are some on the LOC. Their pioneering work on a stone-age website goes largely unnoticed.
Munich, 12 years later: Everything is different. The opening game is a highly entertaining affair that sees Germany, under Klinsmann's stewardship, score four times against a valiant Costa Rica. Nothing is the same in the bowels of the stada and media centres either. Hardly anywhere else is the convergence of information technologies more evident than here. It is no coincidence that the FIFA World Cup is at the technological forefront, nor is it simply a consequence of the rapid pace at which technology is developing in the new millennium.
One of the catalysts was unquestionably Korea/Japan 2002, the first World Cup to be staged outside Europe and America. Not only did it break new ground geographically, it was also a quantum leap in technological terms. Four years later, the associations transfer information (images, text, data) on players, teams and matches by electronic means to FIFA, from where it is sent seamlessly to other systems and channels. The internal competitions division, the official website, the online media channel, TV graphics, media printouts, giant screens, feeds for G3 devices and much more besides are all supplied from the same source - the boundaries between the individual media and tools are steadily merging. An achievement that will also be in evidence at the UEFA Championships in 2008 and hopefully will conquer the Olympic world in London in 2012.”

Paul Johnson, vice-president of new media, US PGA Tour

“Many technological improvements over the years have really impacted on sports. From broadcast television, to cable’s multiple channels, satellite TV, sky cams, player/coaches microphones, slow-motion cameras, and one of my favourites, the first-down graphic line for American Football. What an impact the lines have on enjoying a football game, it’s hard to watch without them. However, when focusing on the last five years, no technological advancement has had more impact on sports than the rapid adoption of broadband internet connectivity.
Broadband internet connectivity has grown at an accelerated pace, from 18m to more than 60m households in the last five years in the US, and now totaling over 300m worldwide. Adoption rates vary around the world, but the related behaviours of those adopters do not. Inevitably, they spend more time on the internet, and they have a better online experience. They consume more content, more sports programming and more advertising than the average user. In fact, in the US, broadband users spend twice the amount of time online as non-broadband users and they spend more time online than watching TV. They use this connected time to consume more video and to form deeper connections with their sport/team/players of interest. Broadband lets fans get what they want, when they want it. Because the experience is non-linear, they can receive programming, or they can go dig deep for what they specifically want to find. This is the best of both worlds for the casual and hard-core sports fan.
For the PGA Tour, high broadband adoption has enabled us to enrich our content offerings and provide a better fan experience. In 2007 alone, through PGATour.com, we delivered over 400 hours of live golf video coverage online and 5,000 hours of video clips. We are also able to consider richer data applications (e.g. 3D) and more interactive multimedia combinations (e.g. multi-camera, data/video integration etc.)
The broadband experience, as it has shown over the last five years, makes a big difference because it helps fans stay much more engaged with their favorite sport.”

Andrew Brown, chief operating officer, Racing UK

“Sadly, the answer I believe is something that is no longer sexy, and is not even a recent development in many parts of the world: digital satellite TV.
Nonetheless, the reach of digital satellite TV has had an enormous effect on sport over the past five years, because it has only spread into Asia and other parts of the former ‘Third World’ during this timeframe.
With digital satellite has come the ability for sports to reach millions, nay billions of new fans, who have steadily become customers to some of the biggest sporting brands in the world. DSat has therefore enabled merchandising and rights revenues to skyrocket for brands such as Manchester United, NFL, Formula One, US PGA and indeed the Olympic Games. This has in turn had an enormous effect on these sports, and all others as well, so that we now have professional ‘amateur’ athletes and multi-millionaire footballers and golfers.
Of course, this dynamic has also changed the sports themselves: Monday night English Premier League soccer games, night time Australian Open tennis, Winter Olympic Games under lights, Twenty20 Cricket, these are a few of the innovations that have arrived as sports try to ensure that they are ever more TV, sponsor and merchandiser-friendly.”

Read the first edition of Sport Media Technology, the new quarterly supplement from SportBusiness International, edited by S&T Editor Rachael Church-Sanders, starting in March 2008, for answers from the above sports property representatives to the question: 'Which technology will have the most impact on sport in the next five years?’

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