The Sports Professor Rick Horrow, in conjunction with promotional partner Northern Trust, reviews the business of instant replay devices and technologies such as the First and Ten Line and the new tennis Hawk-Eye system.
Two weeks ago, the Jackson-Harkleroad first round match at the NASDAQ-100 Tennis Open in Miami ushered in a new era in tennis, and defined the intersection between sports and technology.
For the first time, the Hawk-Eye challenge system was used in a professional tennis match. Invented by former British cricket player Paul Hawkins, the technology allows an optical tracking system to animate a tennis line call. Players receive two challenges per set.
161 calls were challenged during the 12-day tournament, and 53 were overturned. While three quarters of the players approved of the system before it was installed, almost all believed the experiment was a success by the end of the tournament. The $120,000 price tag was covered by the ITF, USTA, and the men’s and women’s tours, with the $40,000 difference paid by the tournament itself. The next stop for the device: the U.S. Open, though at a half-million price tag and only for the two main show courts.
Instant replay debuted on television in 1963; the “CBS football chalkboard” in 1982; and the Fox “glowing hockey puck” in 1996. Purists decried the “invasion” of artificial technology devices; realists countered that the trend enhanced the fan experience and was here to stay.
The realists, it seems, were right.
FAN ENHANCEMENT TECHNOLOGY
The most famous sports technology innovation is probably the “First and Ten Line” produced by Princeton Video Imaging, Inc. Debuting on NFL telecasts a decade ago, the laser line has become a mainstay on all football broadcasts.
A few years ago, Fox Sports pulled the line from broadcasts in an attempt to cut costs. After fan uproar they quickly restored it, to the tune of $10,000 per broadcast.
The key to the first down line’s longevity has been its reduced cost. Two years ago, almost all of college football implemented the line for as little as $4,000 per game. The evolution of this device proves a very important point – tech innovations must generate revenue (or at least pay for themselves) in order to remain on the sporting landscape.
Other fan-friendly enhancements include the aforesaid Fox glowing puck, introduced during the 1996 NHL All-Star Game. Two years later, Fox announced that it would not use the $50,000 per game puck during its final season of NHL coverage – the controversy still ignites hockey fans.
With auto racing, Sportvision’s RACEf/x has been used during NASCAR broadcasts on all major networks to provide such car performance data as speed, position, time behind leaders, and brake and throttle information.
In baseball, Fox debuted the “Catcher Cam” during the 1997 All-Star Game, mounting a small camera on the catcher’s mask. Around the same time, baseball unveiled the “QuesTec” system to track baseball pitches.
