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Representatives from a selection of industry service providers 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?’  Philip Hennemann, CEO, Infostrada Sports
“I believe that if you are looking forwards or backwards, it is the same development, namely the continued involvement of technology in sport itself. It will increasingly influence the outcome of sports events and the way they are perceived.
In cycling, the rider used to be more or less on his own in judging the pace of a race, and had to rely on having instructions shouted at him by his team leader through a car window at 60kms an hour. Nowadays he has a full telecoms system on his bike, communicating directly to his team leader, who can also see exactly where all the other riders are because of their GPS positioning. And on some occasions the heart rate of the competitors can be monitored to give better clues to their physical state. Effectively this leads to different tactics during the race and interesting information for the viewers. Communication, GPS, biometrics and so on will increasingly influence the sport and also enhance entertainment value.
In tennis we used to enjoy John McEnroe shouting: “Everybody could see there was chalk dust!” The only electronic aids were to indicate whether the ball touched the net cord, whilst everything else was judged by the human eye, much to the anger of the players who often could judge better. There was nothing more frustrating than a wrong call, especially when it really mattered. Essentially Hawkeye as a neutral and independent judge has largely solved this issue. Technical developments supporting or replacing the referee will increasingly be part of many sports.
Also, the game analysis through video research, virtual replay, crunching numerous in-depth statistics, will bring insight to coaches on individual athletes and the team as a whole which did not exist before. This will lead to different selection criteria and other tactical changes in many sports, slowly but certainly. It is more the mindset that needs to change rather than the availability of the techniques.”  Francis Tellier, CEO, Host Broadcast Services, host broadcaster of the FIFA World Cup
“Digital compression is the most significant, all-encompassing innovation of recent times, one which has changed sports broadcasting dramatically and goes on opening up exciting possibilities. It has been key to everything, as the whole broadcast industry has benefited directly from computer technology and telecommunications’ enormous R&D capability. It has – directly or indirectly - opened many broadcast or non-broadcast channels or outlets, driven the demand for more and more content and offered inventive producers ways to meet this demand.
Only to take the example of FIFA WC Host Broadcasting, as early as 2002 HBS pioneered a multi-feed signal for its broadcasters, and in 2006 introduced a Media Server at the IBC offering content produced either for broadcasters or for ‘new media’ outlets.
Nothing is wasted, and we don’t any longer ‘kill the buffalo for just one steak’: the original pictures are post produced and repurposed for a variety of outlets which enjoy more choice than ever for their programming.
HBS now works in the zone between technological advances, customer needs and viewer expectations. The skill is to anticipate what will be ‘state-of-the-art’ four years ahead of the flagship event. HBS’ track record means that it can now initiate broadcast product development with suppliers, working hand-in-hand with the leading innovators, the like of Sony, Panasonic, Thomson or EVS, as well as with lesser known innovators eager to have their products used in the prestigious FIFA WC context, even if they cannot enjoy official public recognition for that.”  David Jamieson, head of media solutions, BT Media and Broadcast
“The biggest changes that I have seen affect the sports industry in the last five years have been in decreasing infrastructure costs. Whereas the cost for rights to broadcast premium content have increased dramatically, the costs of acquisition and delivery have fallen to a fraction of what they use to be. Five years ago the capital cost per channel for a playout platform came in at about £100k. Playout providers such as Omnibus have recently announce entry level, open architecture, PC or server based platforms at a cost of around £25k per channel. Other suppliers are also looking to provide PC software capable of providing, field based editing functionality at around £1k.
The costs to get content on to alternative platforms such as the internet have also come down dramatically. Five years ago transcode costs were about £4 a minute and streaming costs were around £3 per Gbyte delivered. Transcoding costs are now around £1 a minute and streaming costs are down to around 15p per Gbyte delivered. At present, to stream an hour and a half of sports content on the internet, for 1,500 viewers at 500 kbps comes to £300 or around 20p each.
The mobile network operators have also changed their approach to mobile content. In the past, they restricted access to content allowing consumption only via their own walled gardens or mobile portals, requesting the majority of any transaction value for the privilege of doing so. Now they are allowing off portal access to WAP2.0 or XHTML internet portals gaining revenue only from data traffic. ESPN's Cricinfo has recently launched a mobile, ad-funded portal available to all mobile phones which is moving the revenue stream even further away from the distribution networks.
With the cost for a ‘man and a van and satellite dish’ for a weekend event coming in at around £5k you are looking today at very low investment in infrastructure. Even if high definition is required, the additional costs are only around an extra 20% - if only the rights were available.”  Tony Singh, manager, Spectrum Value Partners
“Technology has changed the world a great deal in the last five years. Think back to 2002-03 - the first iPod had only just been released. Most people had never heard of ‘social networking’, let alone MySpace or Facebook. Even a digital stalwart like Amazon was yet to make a full year profit.
But has there been a technological development that has had a major impact on sport in the last five years? I’m not entirely sure that there has.
Technology certainly plays a role in lots of areas of sport – most notably in its distribution to the public but also in areas like officiating (HawkEye first in cricket and now tennis has definitely made some sort of impact) and grass roots administration where Sunday League soccer fixtures and results are now regularly distributed by mobile text messages and collated in online databases that are widely accessible.
So it’s important to think about how we define impact. But if we are talking about commercial impact – and that’s the sort of impact that can really have widespread implications – I don’t think we’ve really seen technology fundamentally change the nature of sport at all – in the last five years.
There have been lots of technological pots of gold over the rainbow, but how many of them have followed through? Broadband penetration has grown massively in the last five years – in Western Europe, from below 10% of households to around 50% – but broadband distribution has certainly not revolutionised premium sport: broadband rights have value, but these continue to pale in comparison to the sums offered to sport for television rights.
Similarly, there is merit in the opportunity that mobile offers to make sure you don’t miss a minute of the action wherever you are – but whether the distribution is via UMTS, HSDPA, DVB-H or some other flavour of DMB (remember when you were told that acronym x, y or z was the future?), the fundamental truth remains that if you can get to a big screen, you will almost certainly choose to.
This is the strength of premium sport – that it remains must-see TV, the hearth around which the world continues to gather in an ever-fragmenting media landscape.
It’s also immune to the ‘On Demand’ models – timeshifting and ‘sync’n’go’ with devices like a Sky+ box or an iPod – because the nature of the content makes it time-sensitive. There’s much less fun in watching a match when you know the score.
And that’s great news for the future, because sport will remain one of the few opportunities – to advertisers and media companies alike – to guarantee large audiences of people will be engaging with the same content at the same time.” 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 service providers to the question: 'Which technology will have the most impact on sport in the next five years?’
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