THE FUTURE IS HERE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM CES 2024
Pete Oller, our new Lead Strategist, writes about the future advancements of sports technology that were showcased at CES 2024.
By Pete Oller
When it comes to ground-breaking technology from the biggest (and smallest) players on the planet, CES is the place to be. Over 3-days in Las Vegas, the world’s innovators congregate for spectacular showcases and talks from pioneers in innovation, to discuss and debate how technology will shape our future.
Sport technology plays a prominent role at CES. Sport’s growing influence in society, as well as the billions of dollars associated with it, means it’s no wonder that investment is being put into enhancing every part, from the fan experience to athlete performance. CES illustrates how technology is fuelling our passion and sustaining sports pre-eminence.
Using Tech to Create Sports Partnerships with Purpose
The Silicon Valley tech players are starting to see the unique value that sports marketing offers. Signing a top sports team shows legitimacy in the eyes of consumers and a business that is gaining momentum – ideal for unicorn startups looking for longevity. A ‘nugget’ of insight on this came from the talk on ‘Brand Partnerships in the Sports World Innovated by Tech’, where Denver natives Ibotta, a new age cashback platform, are quickly understanding the power of tapping into local fandom and provincial power. They partnered with the Denver Nuggets on a 3-year front of shirt deal. This gave Ibotta the permission and authority to talk to fans about cash back on all types of sporting goods including NBA merch. A big win. And supporting your hometown team does no harm to employee morale – especially when Nikola Jokic, the best player in the league, is your star player.
Employee initiatives can be an extremely powerful marketing tool. Kate Johnson, former Olympian and now Google Director, formed a career advocating for women’s sports. Google saw this, hired her, and gave her the platform to right the wrongs she saw in the sporting world. From this, she has led the partnership with Google and The Athletic to double the press coverage of women’s sports. A powerful talk with Sebastain Tomich, the CCO of The Athletic surfaced how male sports coverage in the US has created an ‘opt in from birth’ phenomenon – the idea that the vast amount of male sport available to consume means you have no choice but to be a fan, and in stark contrast the relative paucity of women’s sport means we default ‘opt-out’.
Fuelling Innovative Fan Experiences Through Tech
A purpose-driven message can be powerful, but as the saying goes, sport is nothing without its fans. Sony knows this and at CES 2024 pushed their ambition to build the ultimate virtual fan experiences. Their current partnership with Manchester City will introduce a proof of concept later this year (an improvement on previous attempts). In the meantime, a fun experience was showcased that allowed participants to immerse themselves in the world of Ghostbusters, using their unique haptic carpet.
Creating new and immerse worlds for fans is the next frontier in sports. Anyone anywhere can be a fan. As opportunities like Ibotta and the Nuggets are not only harder to find but don’t do much for the new global fan, it is crucial that you design experiences with every fan in mind. The National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) are at the forefront of this thinking. In a partnership with Metaverse experts MeetKai and their commercial arm THINK450, they cloned the instore experience ‘The Brotherhood Deli’, which was a physical pop-up at the NBA Summer League, and used it to sells drops and exclusive giveaways. A win-win for the players who get to flog merch, whilst fans are made to feel closer to them.
Game Changing tech that is Changing the Game
World-class fan experience is all well and good, but it is academic when on the field performance doesn’t stack up. CES included a fascinating talk with Arsenal FC and LA Rams on how they acquire and use data to maximise team performance. Evidencing the trend of different sport teams being linked by the same owner (Stan Kroenke owns both teams, and the Nuggets for good measure), the discussion revealed that football on each side of the pond may share the value they put on data and tech, but the way they are used is massively different. From the number of players being tracked (Arsenal dwarf Rams with a database of 400,000 players), to the 200-500 attributes being tracked on College Quarterbacks by the Rams, or how Arsenal is finding ways to quantify the unquantifiable – especially the elusive ‘footballing intelligence’, which recognises that often the person with the ball isn’t the most important.
As we know, fans not only love to watch, but many also love to ‘play’. Today there are multiple tools to help amateurs create stand out content for their teams and give it that professional sheen. The challenge, though, is the amount of time and cost that comes with it. This is where Rematch comes in. The sports video platform offers a free app that allows anyone to capture the best action. Instant automatic editing creates summaries ready to be shared and hosted on a single platform, allowing anyone, anywhere to view it. So yes, Pete, that half volley from outside the box can be relived.
The Weird and Wonderful World of Sports Technology
CES is the place to see boundary-pushing technology for sports and fans. From game changing potential - like Samsung’s AI Motion Enhancer Pro that automatically detects the sport you’re watching and uses deep learning to help you visually track fast moving objects like baseballs and footballs on screen with crystal clarity; to the movement analysis system Ochy, a free app that provides all the key metrics and data you need to know about someone’s technique within 1 minute. It also includes the weird and wonderful, and this year’s winner is Drone Soccer, a new high-tech sport where players use their aviation skills to compete against each other with remote controlled drones (Quidditch, anyone?).
Whatever your relationship with sports, the January event is a great way to kick-off the year and inspire us all about what the future holds.