I'm sending this after a full day of programming for SBJ Tech Week in New York, my head spinning like an owl to find the next conversation. As this arrives in your inbox, I'm probably trying to convince his SBJ Tech colleagues to go eat his potato croquettes at Dutch Fred's. I gave birth in October, and I'm still thinking about it.
Tuesday night's Sports Business Awards: Tech awards ceremony was a great event and provided an opportunity for people in the industry to network. It also provided an opportunity to identify people and companies that are innovating creatively and substantively.
The SBJ Tech team asked many attendees who in the industry they look up to as innovation trendsetters: leagues, teams, technology companies.
Below are some answers.
Rick Alessandri: Managing Director, Media and Sports Technology, TurnkeyZRG
“What Jeb Terry and Cosm are doing is going to be revolutionary because it's a smaller scale model. Sphere is amazing, but it cost more than $2 billion and it's going to be reproducible over and over again. But what Jeb is doing, and how it could probably be incorporated into part of the planetarium model, to bring that experience to sports fans and create something like a live event within the fan experience. Creating an environment will become something. [in] You'll see something like this popping up in every major market within the next three to five years. ”
Walter Farfan: CIO of Peak AI:
“Everything is going to try to compete at this point.” [ChatGPT creator] Open AI. So where is our job in AI? So where is our job in AI? I think it's too much for one person to have this much power. If we look at humanity, we need to spread it. And OpenAI has huge advantages. …Companies I'm paying attention to [are] …everyone who can innovate as quickly as possible. ”
Corey Patton: Pramana Labs CEO:
“Here are two: Fanatics — I know everyone writes about them, but they're a genius at creating a perfect, arcane Venn diagram of league and team partnerships, online retail, and mobile betting. It will be interesting to see how they can use their captive customer database to significantly reduce customer acquisition costs for sportsbooks while providing seamless and unique cross-selling opportunities within a single platform. and Katalyst — leveraging EMS technology to create strength, power, and stability without the loads of traditional strength training is an entirely new approach to fine-tuning athletic performance. While the focus is on golf, I'm also looking at how they're promoting technology for everything from repetitive injury prevention to surgical prefabrication.”
You'll hear more of these thoughts and conversations throughout the rest of SBJ Tech Week's programming, especially Thursday morning's Sports Tech Connect and Breakfast at the Times Center.
Crowd attending a session on the first day of SBJ Tech Week talks
David Nugent's founding vision for Next League was focused on guiding sports organizations through technology decisions and implementation. That consultation and activation also created a mission-focused undercurrent to the partnership.
Last year alone, Next League initiatives included a donation to Palm Beach State University’s TMRW Sports Fund. The foundation provides support for scholarships and academic programs, as well as establishing the Next League USOPF Endowment Fund, his $500,000 gift to provide funding to select universities. A portion of the living and training costs of U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes.
“I have older children now,” Nugent told SBJ. “You start thinking about the world from a different perspective. Like, what would life be like for them? … So you start thinking about business in a different way.”
Nugent has watched the diversification around sports tech events grow throughout his career, but he recognizes how inaccessible that ecosystem can be. And this is the foundation of her two initiatives, centered around this SBJ Tech Week (and beyond), aimed at increasing the presence and visibility of women in sports tech.
At the Sports Business Awards: Tech awards ceremony, Next League COO Becki Civello announced that the company will be sponsoring a new award starting next year called the “Next In Sports Tech: Rising Female Tech Leader award.” The award recognizes rising female stars in sports technology, from league/team employees to sports-related technology companies.
This announcement created a huge buzz at the event, with applause and lively conversation afterwards.
Next League also pledged a $10,000 donation to the Women's Sports Foundation specifically to support efforts to support women in STEM. WSF CEO Danette Leighton said in a statement to SBJ that Next League's donation will help “build a future where all girls and women can play, compete and lead without barriers in sports and beyond. It will help us continue to build.”
Nugent said he looks forward to the Next League awards being presented online next year and future opportunities to support the diversification of the STEM and sports industry sectors through the platform provided by SBJ Tech Week.
“This is a great opportunity to tell the story we tell because we're not selling a product and it's so far-reaching in sports,” Nugent said. said at SBJ Tech Week. “What's really important is how we can support sports organizations strategically and even from an execution perspective. This is a really great platform for us.”
SBJ Tech Week kicked off with a lively SBA: Tech event at the Hard Rock Hotel, presenting eight awards to the industry's brightest companies. A summary of the award winners is as follows:
- The WNBA has signed a deal with Genius Sports for the use of Second Spectrum optical tracking cameras, making it the first women's professional sports league in the U.S. to have access to 3D player and ball data, writes SBJ's Joe Lemire.
- The NFL has partnered with AWS to announce the results of the 6th Annual Big Data Bowl, with the team taking first place for a project that “uncovers missed tackle opportunities,” Lemire said.
- As part of a multi-year partnership with sports memorabilia specialist Memento Exclusives, the Aston Martin Aramco F1 team is manufacturing and selling an AMR24 car show simulator, Schaefer reported.
- NASCAR is developing an immersive experience that would use augmented reality technology to allow fans to participate in ongoing Cup Series races in real time, Lemire wrote.
- Next week's BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells will be the first event to trigger Sportsradar's agreement with Tennis Data Innovations to enhance betting and data streams for consumers, Rob Schaefer said. points out.
- The NFL is testing optical tracking technology such as Hawkeye to explore whether the latest tools can supplement or replace the first-down chain and take control of decisions judged by the human eye, Lemire said. He reports. The system was tested at two stadiums this season, including Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
