Nine Technology Innovations That Have Made Sports So Much Better for Fans

By Thomas Wailgum

Technological innovations in sports have had a dramatic impact on athletes and their abilities to compete. Much of that can be attributed to advances in equipment, training and the venues themselves.

But the athletes aren't the only ones who have "gained a step" from technology. Today's sporting fans have access to gluttonous amounts of statistics, news, transactions and in-depth data sources that provide visibility into every aspect of the games. In fact, it could be argued that a typical business user's "dashboard" is nowhere near as complete or easy to use as an average fan's "dashboard." How much access do business users have to real-time data about every competing company in their industry, every employee and partner of those competitors (from the CEO on down to the intern), and every single business arena they play in?

Here are nine technology innovations that have greatly enhanced the fan experience—and made business users everywhere extremely jealous. Feel free to add your comment to the mix, including any sports innnovation we might have missed.

Yellow "1st and 10" Lines

We take it for granted now, but while watching football games before 1998 we had only a rough guess of how far our team had to go to get a new set of downs. Thus was created the virtual "1st and 10" yellow line, a broadcasting TV innovation that has become a requirement for football viewing. (The players on the field can't see it.) It was developed by Sportvision, which also created the gone-but-not-forgotten FoxTrax glowing hockey puck for the National Hockey League and the KZone virtual strike zone for Major League Baseball. ESPN named the "1st and 10 Line" as the seventh biggest innovation during the last 25 years in sports.

Source: Sport Vision

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