I created Sport Techie in March of 2010 as a way to spotlight the enormous contribution technology has made to the global sports industry, estimated today at $114 billion. It’s difficult to imagine a world with no NFL Red Zone, HDTV, or Fantasy Football. Plenty of other news outlets will bring you the latest scores or details about the hottest new gadgets. But Sport Techie is the first dedicated site to cover the fascinating developments unfolding at the intersection of sports and technology.
Of course, these innovations require the hard work, creativity, and persistence of some amazing entrepreneurs and visionaries. Sadly, one of the best of them, Steve Jobs, passed away last month.
ESPN’s Mark Kreidler did a noteworthy job of highlighting the Apple CEO’s reach in sports. The following is Kreidler’s laundry list of things that exist today in sports thanks to Steve Jobs’ vision:
- The white earbuds that so many athletes use while in transit or warm-ups
- The iPad that so many coaches, including those for the NFL’s Bucs and Ravens, are now using as playbooks
- Software for broadcasting sports content
- The iPhone, which has allowed for the development of sports applications now downloaded by millions
Kreidler also points to the fact that Jobs was the single largest shareholder of the Disney Company, which owns ESPN.
But perhaps the most interesting item on Kreidler’s list was Apple’s decision to air its famous “1984” ad during the Super Bowl. That single decision arguably transformed the Super Bowl into the largest advertising opportunity in history. In 2010, for example, a 30-second commericial was purchased for as much as $2.8 million. As Kreidler put it:
The result, the famous ‘1984’ ad, played like a movie trailer, but with the sonic and visual punch of an advertisement. You don’t have to Google for long to find it. And it was that ad, beyond any other development, that ushered in the age of the Super Bowl commercial craze. Or, to put it another way, you wouldn’t have the Betty White Snickers commercial if you didn’t first have the dark, Orwellian Mac ad of ’84.
Sport Techie examines not only today’s innovations in sports technology, it also offers insights on what the future may hold. And you can bet there are some amazing changes just around the corner. In fact, it has been reported that Steve Jobs was working on the next Apple product the day before he died.
Is his biggest impact on sports still to come?