Here is an overview of some of the best SXSports panels, that we were able to attend, which discussed technology in sports at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive.
Virtual and augmented reality were a large part of this year’s sports tech focus at the conference, so we published an article covering those presentations. Check it out here: SXSW Sports: The Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality in Sports.
MLBAM & NASCAR: Sports and Tech converge
Presenters: Bob Bowman, president and CEO of MLB Advanced Media; Brent Dewar, Chief Operating Office of NASCAR; Rachel Nichols, Reporter for TNT/CNN
The discussion focused on the technology NASCAR and MLB have in place for their teams and fans.
Brent Dewar said that all 43 pit stalls in NASCAR have camera technology that help shave seconds off of pit stops. They complement their broadcast using Raceview to give fans a 3-D car experience.
“If you have not been to NASCAR lately, you haven’t been to NASCAR,” Dewar said when discussing the significance of technology on the association.
He said NASCAR’s biggest issue is being able to package its content and bring it to fans the way they want it.
The future of technology in NASCAR will expand on racers biometrics: reading a driver’s pulse, heart rate and stress levels.
On the baseball side of things, replay has had a major impact. Bob Bowman said that the new replay technology has not had pushback and has proven the abilities of MLB’s umpires. He hopes to expand on the technology and make reviewing plays even faster. Bowman said that every smart pitcher watches his performance on a tablet on the bus ride after the game.
The biggest problem MLB must overcome is the pace of the game. Bowman says it is not realistic, they are looking for ways to eliminate the time between innings and pitches. He says viewers tuning in have a higher chance of seeing action if the pace of the game quickens.
Bowman says the future of technology in baseball will include “mundane things” like being told which parking spaces are open, having tickets pop up on your phone as you enter the stadium, and being able to see which concessions have the smallest lines.
“We do not know what is next in tech, but we will get help to figure it out,” Bowman said at the conference. “Whatever it is, we want to be on it.”
And then there was this great quote from Bowman, “Our phones are our first screens, reality is second.”
Gameday 2025: What’s in your Living Room?
Presenters: Jeff Beckham, Writer for Playbook/Wired; Mark Kramer, Head of Digital Technology at Pac-12 Networks; Spencer Hall, Editorial Director for Vox Media/SB Nation; William Mao, Head of College Sports Partnerships for Youtube
The panel members focused on the transformation of television and how fans will be watching sports on TV in the near future.
“I think what I really want is the TV to know who I am,” Mark Kramer said. “I want it to know what I like, and for it to deliver linear TV to me. We have this with Facebook where Facebook knows what you like and builds on that. We need the ability to personalize the entire TV experience: It can give you ads, it can give you offers, a number of incredible things.”
But today’s viewers do not wait to see their content.
“People in sports want the shortest points to content,” Spencer Hall said. “They don’t want the line around the fence, they will cut through the fence.”
But television stations and providers are finding unique ways to bring content to viewers. Hall said he likes services like ESPN3 that provide the user a broad number of events they can choose from. And Mao welcomes providers like Direct TV who now offer out-of-market games. Camera technology is also changing the way we watch sports.
“Think about someone being at a control room deciding which camera to go too.” Kramer said, “What you do with live streaming a lot now is ‘hey we are setting up these cameras at these locations.’ Now the viewer can click on whichever one you want. If you are watching an NFL broadcast, you have that zip line cam, coaches mic’d up, and cameras in the huddle.”
And new ways of packaging audio could enhance the atmosphere of games. Univision started broadcasting MLS games in two languages this year. The viewer just needs to change their SAP settings on their TV and the broadcast changes from primary (Spanish) to secondary (English) languages.
“If you have Ivory Coast against Chile I want to be able to flip between the African announcer and the South American announcer,” Hall said. “It doesn’t matter what they say, it is about getting that electricity. Because I watch soccer in English, but I watch goals on Univision.”
Mao says the takeaway is that “people are breaking away from cookie cutting ways of watching sports.”
Fantasy Sports: Changing the Fan Experience Daily
Presenters: Clifton Ma, Head of Fantasy Sports at Yahoo!; Matthew Berry, Sr. Fantasy Analyst at ESPN; Nigel Eccles, CEO of Fanduel
Fantasy has made a huge impact on the way fans experience their favorite sports. This panel discussed the different platforms of fantasy and how the game is changing.
Baseball has a flat growth pattern whereas football has the largest fantasy audience of any sport at 15 million users. But fantasy football players are starting to branch out and play in different leagues.
“Very commonly people play football and then at the end of the season they switch over to basketball,” Eccles said.
Eccles says that players play anywhere from 17 to 24 hours a week on Fanduel. Fantasy gamers play anywhere from 4 to 7 NBA games a week and 10 percent buy a basketball league pass. Matthew Berry says that 10 percent of players subscribe to ESPN Insider.
In September of last year ESPN broke fantasy records with 1.7 billion minutes of play. ESPN also offers players daily fantasy with their Streak for the Cash game. Fanduel is known for their daily fantasy play and Clifton Ma says he will continue to gauge whether daily fantasy is in the future of Yahoo!
“People are more motivated by money,” Ma said. “When we think about what daily means to us it would be foolish to not keep our eyes on things.”
The panel members also noted an increase in television viewing for games people would normally not watch if they did not play daily fantasy.
“The level of consumption is phenomenal for daily fantasy, people in the East coast are up until three in the morning to see West coast games,” Eccles said.
And when asked about whether players are starting to love their fantasy teams more than their favorite teams, Wu said, “You pick the fantasy – it’s your team versus a team picked by a billionaire you don’t know.”
South by Southwest 2015 presented some intriguing outlooks into the future of technology in sports. Virtual reality, enhanced video and audio for television, player biometrics, and a growing population of fantasy players are a few things we will be keeping track of in the next few years. Next year we will find out how far the technology from SXSports 2015 has progressed and what significance it has in the sports world.