Sports Tech of the Year – for Sport and in Sport
adi.tv & Supponor
Augmented reality perimeter technology is the next great revenue opportunity in sport. The ability to create multiple broadcast feeds, featuring different brand messages overlaid on perimeter LED displays during an event changes the way brands can interact with international audiences and unlocks huge new revenue opportunities for clubs and venues.
Virtual-Hybrid is a breakthrough technology combining ADI’s digiBOARD perimeter LED solution – used by 15 of the 20 English Premier League football clubs – with Supponor’s virtual replacement technology, which currently features in Spain’s La Liga, and is the only virtual replacement solution that is reliably proven in broadcast.
The new ‘Virtual-Hybrid’ digiBOARD system is the first solution of its kind to successfully combine the two industry leading technologies. The first system of its kind has been installed at Watford Football Club’s Vicarage Road stadium in 2016.
The solution makes it possible for sports clubs and venues to significantly increase revenue by commercialising the same perimeter media space multiple times over by changing the branding seen on the display by audiences watching in different territories whilst maintaining a dynamic LED experience for fans in the stadium.
CFC Express
Chelsea proved themselves to be at the forefront of innovation by becoming the first club to introduce a dedicated match day catering app, CFC Express, to the UK sports market.
The CFC Express catering app allows supporters to pre-order food and drink up to 48 hours before match day, ensuring shorter queues and offering fantastic discounts on food and drink.
The app also provides the largest selection of retail food and drink in comparison to any UK football club, including meat pies, burgers, choice of vegetarian, halal approved, gluten free and dairy free options; as well as ciders, ales, fine wines, spirits and even Champagnes.
Football Whispers
Developed by football fans, for football fans, Football Whispers aims to be the world’s first and only football transfer predictor; an online portal that displays information in a user friendly dashboard, using proven data science to make sense of the gossip and solve the equation for one of the most talked about and published subjects in the world today.
A unique algorithm was developed, separating fact from predictions, social media speculation and punditry by taking transfer rumours that appear online and calculating the real likelihood of each rumour happening. Football Whispers interrogates millions of data sources across the web and social media, calculating the volume, authority and recency of those sources to determine a unique Index score.
Football Whispers’ bold objective from day one was to become the number one place for football fans to find the latest and best transfer news in the world. A year on and it is well on its way to achieving that ambition. The results speak for themselves: 25,000 app users, nearly one million visitors to the site each month and over seven million rumours processed, from which 9,000 transfers have completed and over 115,000 false positives have been identified.
Kick It Out – Updated Reporting Application
Kick It Out is football’s equality and inclusion organisation. The charity organisation is core funded by The FA, the PFA, Premier League and the English Football League.
The organisation has raised awareness of and challenged discrimination across the professional, non-league and grassroots levels of the game for over 20 years. With the support of English football authorities, the organisation has been able to help clubs become a more inclusive and welcoming place for supporters from all backgrounds.
Through the development of the Kick It Out reporting app, individuals can report any incident of discrimination that takes place within football, across all levels of the game.
This innovative app, which launched its second version in August 2015, has focused on gathering more conclusive evidence for investigations with new functionality allowing media to supplement incident reports.
The updated version of the app also allows complainants to shield their identifying information from professional clubs and the football authorities by selecting the ‘remain anonymous’ option contained within the reporting form.
This initiative has been supported across football and beyond, with the app providing football the opportunity to eradicate discrimination from the game.
Peak UK – Racer ST
Peak UK is a world leading canoeing and kayaking manufacturer. In 2016, in collaboration with British Canoeing, the English Institute of Sport and UK Sport, they created one of the most innovative paddle sport garments in a generation. Taking the world of slalom canoeing by storm, their ground breaking Racer ST garment revised the traditional outlook of the mandatory personal flotation device. Redistributing buoyancy to create a single streamline garment, Peak UK created a product that can be truly considered as a performance enhancing piece of equipment.
A highly confidential, four-year plan culminated in Joe Clarke winning Team GB’s first ever canoe slalom K1 gold medal and C2 pair, David Florence and Richard Hounslow, securing silver at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
STATSports
STATSports was founded by Alan Clarke and Sean O’Connor in 2008 and has since changed the way sport is analysed, coached and viewed, by combining cutting edge technology and sports science.
We provide the world’s leading performance monitoring devices for elite sports teams. Our devices are worn by athletes during training sessions and in matches to collect intricate data on their performance and physical well-being. This allows managers and coaches to make decisions to adjust player or team workloads based on the data provided by our Viper system.
Originally based in Ireland, STATSports now has over 30 full-time employees and count hundreds of the world’s leading sporting organisations as clients including: 15/20 Premier League teams such as Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal as well as FC Barcelona, Juventus, English FA, FAI, RFU and the IRFU.
STATSports expanded to North America in 2014 and opened our American Headquarters in Chicago in 2015. We have since signed deals with over 30 teams across the NFL, NBA and MLS with teams including: Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Chicago Bulls and LA Galaxy.
StreamAMG – StreamMP
StreamAMG’s platforms allow for the commercialisation of online video content, via Stream Media Platform (StreamMP) and its associated payment & subscription management service, offers an end to end turnkey solution for rights holders and publishers in sport to monetise content.
Online video content will sit comfortably embedded within the right’s holders websites, with targeted advertising, pay per view or subscription models all supported to allow absolute control of monetisation options. Branded players and watermarks ensure that your content matches with the rest of your online presence, while in-depth analytical tools mean that you have all the information about your audiences at the tips of your fingers.
Focusing on delivering bespoke solutions, our experts deal with production, signal acquisition, project management and are able to integrate with existing systems and CMS. Our applications are technically excellent and connected to a global CDN. StreamAMG has a huge client list of businesses within the sports sector using our products, ranging from Liverpool FC, Manchester United FC, English Football League, the Professional Darts Corporation, the Open Championship and many more.
We pride ourselves in offering innovative solutions which maximise commercial returns on your content and have been doing so for 15 years strong.
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club – Stadium Project Virtual Reality Suite
Tottenham Hotspur’s Stadium Project Virtual Reality Suite (SPVRS) uses the cutting edge technology of Virtual and Augmented Reality to showcase premium packages at its new stadium, set to open in 2018, to potential customers. The technology is not only impressive but also supports vital parts of the sales process.
The SPVRS experience helps the customer truly visualise the premium areas of the new stadium before it is built within a fully immersive dome, where they watch an exhilarating short film before ‘walking’ around the virtual facilities using a gaming controller. Oculus Rift are used to showcase the premium areas in more detail, as well as the seat views around the stadium.
The SPVRS officially launched on 20 January 2017. More than 2,000 customers have visited and the number of the Club’s Executive Members has already doubled compared to White Hart Lane.
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