The NBA is adept at growing the sport of basketball, and it vows to continue to grow its international popularity through technology. But with the 64th NBA All-Star Game commencing in New York City this weekend, how can the NBA use technology to improve one of its biggest stages?
“One of my goals as commissioner is to use innovation and technology to capture that courtside experience,” Commissioner Adam Silver stated in a Boston Globe article last March.
The Big Apple has become a potent hotbed for innovation and opportunity in the tech startup world–when you fuse it with a league that is all about innovation and opportunity, it can turn into a weekend filled with synergy.
Instead of hosting the traditional stale, vanilla fan-experience event, the NBA could use the Skylight at Moynihan Station to showcase the area’s brightest startups looking to create basketball’s next innovation or enhancement.
The league currently hosts a 4-hour technology summit during the weekend that holds discussions on the future of sports, media, and technology. To take it a step further, the “All-Startup Weekend” would envision an expo or trade show filled with creations and enhancements, waiting to be exposed to technology leaders from the NBA and its teams.
Who knows?
The league could find and partner with its next FanDuel, and capitalize on new opportunities to increase fan participation. Perhaps Mark Cuban comes out of the Shark Tank and finds his next fan experience enhancement at the AAC to stay ahead in the tech landscape:
We’ve seen the National Football League try out new ways to change the game in the preseason and at the Pro Bowl. Here’s what would be cool to see the NBA implement for its weekend festivities.
Krossover
This app takes real sports footage and allows you to freeze it to guess how the play ends. This is currently used by the Cleveland Cavaliers, among other teams and coaches, as another way to analyze film and scout opponents; think of it as having your own video coordinator.
The experience would be best for mobile viewers at home, who can interact and predict the next dunk in the contest or guess Chris Paul’s next dime in the All-Star game. By setting up a rewards or leaderboard system, viewers will have another interactive outlet to participate in, similar to its FanDuel partnership.
“Krossover’s cloud-based platform allows the team to access game clips and data anywhere, share content with their players, and sort film by a wide variety of specific stats, players, plays and more. Krossover also developed sIQ, a mobile app that test athletes’ perceptual skill and evaluates the user’s sports intelligence”, per the Cavaliers’ press release.
Alert Shirt
Based in New York and Sydney, Australia, Wearable Experiments (We:eX) created a wearable technology that allows viewers at home to physically feel what the players feel as it’s happening. The Alert Shirt takes real-time haptic feedback and feeds it through the electronics within the jersey (via smartphone app), so fans can literally feel like they are part of the game.
Just imagine having to feel that impact from the unlucky player brave enough to take a charge from a full-steamed LeBron James or DeMarcus Cousins.
Jersey Cams
We’ve all seen the most memorable moments from dunk contest from Michael Jordan’s free-throw line dunk, to Vince Carter’s 360 windmill. Jersey Cams, like the ones First V1sion created for the Euroleague, would take visuals to a whole new level for State Farm All-Star Saturday Night, where fans get a closer look from the player’s point-of-view.
It would be cool to see through the eyes of John Wall weave through court in the Taco Bell Skills Challenge, Kyle Korver sinking every ball in the last rack of the Foot Locker Three-Point Contest, or Zach LaVine using every bit of his 46-inch vertical to steal the night during the Sprite Slam Dunk.
Although Silver has taken the helm for an entire year now, he’s only scratched the surface of the potential that technology can have for the NBA and its All-Star weekend. The league is already considering expanding the all-star team rosters to showcase as much talent as possible–now, we’d like to see the league do the same by giving startups that same opportunity to enhance the game and truly capture that courtside experience.