Tech In the Sports Industry: 5 Potential New Technologies in Broadcast and Preparation

What sort of innovations could we expect in watching sports like Football, Baseball, or Soccer? would these ideas be helpful or distracting? and for what audiences?

Revisiting the Drawing Board

It is no surprise that a lot of data is generated through statistics and logging of player/vehicle performance. Quantities are listed for each player such as number of passes, touchdowns, home runs, goals scored, miles per hour etc... Despite the continual innovations for personalized entertainment are being done with AWS, it still feels like there is room for additional features that are currently missing and are general enough adjustments for all audiences. Currently, our technology is capable of many things even in live broadcasts that could be implemented and might even bring more people into watching the sport! With all of that being said, here is a brief list of five features to sports broadcast that could be the future for sports entertainment.

#1: Semi transparent Player Tooltips

This on its face can seem redundant as the players wear jerseys with their number on them; why is it necessary to have tooltips with a number or even name along with it? In Baseball it could be even more so when the Pitcher and the Batter are constantly provided with their name and number on the screen. Regardless however, there are plenty of games for any sport where things are moving too fast or is difficult to make out individual players in certain plays. With the improvements and variations of emulating live motion tracking, it could certainly be a possibility to add tooltips to keep track of each player on the field. It would be worth implementing for the general public on TV as it can add a step in a player's personal branding to bring fans of them into watching the sport.

#2: Preferential Sport Environments for viewers

For the 58th Super Bowl, Nickelodeon as well as ESPN broadcasted the game. In the Nickelodeon Version, it emulated alot of Spongebob-Themed Characters and references around the Stadium. This was a good way to try to captivate a younger audience to watch the game and was an opportunity to experiment with things they could add or change around the environment of the broadcast. While an audience may not have an interest in seeing floating Jellyfish around their Sports game, perhaps we might see Scoreboards, Holograms, or Charts for Player Stats immersed inside the Arena environment. Advertisements could also be implemented briefly to reduce the amount of advertisements interrupting the game. Eventually, we may even get to a point where viewers could create settings for what they want to see on the broadcast in terms of additional immersive features.

#3: Jersey QR Codes

With how much is communicated from QR codes, it is surprising that QR Codes, whether on the back of the jersey or a smaller one/more on the sides, are not yet used more commonly on Jerseys to link to a website for each player. While there might be rules on self branding for specific sports, it could still link towards a dedicated page of the league's website with the player's stats and media links provided. This is another way for fans to keep track of a specific player with live performance updates and to potentially include further opportunities for marketing or charity events. Additionally, Because the QR Codes are applicable to each Jersey for each player, this allows an exclusive connection to be made for that individual player. We might be able to see more than just stats, but a hub for multiple kinds of content both featured and exclusive for that particular Jersey.

#4: Non-Invasive Helmet/Body Cameras

This certainly is nothing new at least in regards to sports like Soccer, but the innovation will come from how the footage is used, not so much the implementation of body cameras. Mentioned earlier for Jersey QR Codes, It allows for the creation of exclusive content that has a more targeted type of marketing when complimenting a specific connection to an individual player. It has been used prior for general marketing and promotion over social media to get fans hyped for the upcoming event. In time, we may be able to see live gameplay from each player's perspective which can also result in developed media for VR content. But for now, this might be footage taken per Quarter then uploaded as a replay or highlights.

#5: Smart Fields in Stadiums

Speaking even more idealistically, many kinds of assets in VR development have been created around VR to accommodate the region or limitations of movement the user will need to be both engaged and immersed into the environment. Recently, Disney had created a 360 treadmill to keep a user in-place while doing physical actions for the game. fields for many stadiums are at the mercy of the elements in how the conditions will be for the game. Players have slipped in rainy and icy conditions and temperature itself has been a determining factor on so much as catching the ball. Punctually, Stadium might be able to find a standardization of infrastructure capable of keeping the field stable and identical for the players to be acclimated with.

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