Category Archives: Tech of Sports

From the shoes we wear on our feet to the high definition televisions in our living room, wearable devices, the sports universe is a breeding ground for technology. Writer and Photographer Rick Limpert will examine this each week on The Tech of Sports – With guests which include athletes, inventors and journalists that cover the intersection of sports and technology.

Lokesh Ohri and Kenneth Marzin, Deloitte Digital

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Joined by Lokesh Ohri and Kenneth Marzin from Deloitte Digital this week in a piece that was taped at Adobe Summit.

They discuss how the United States Tennis Association (USTA) is leveraging Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Analytics to promote, develop, and grow the game of tennis in the United States. Experience Manager consolidates 18 subsites into one main site, allowing content authors across 17 USTA sections to access and publish their content on one common platform, leveraging personalization to serve localized content to tennis enthusiasts. The USTA has also used Experience Manager to launch Net Generation to connect youth with tennis providers to drive more kids to play tennis and engage with the game.

Like other sports, tennis faces many challenges, but it doesn’t appear it’s digital strategy is one of them.

Lokesh leads Deloitte’s Advertising, Marketing, and Commerce offering in the Retail Consulting practice.  The USTA is looking to streamline their web presence, but still being the “eco-system” of tennis that tennis players, coaches and enthusiasts expect.

There was an entire breakout session on this at Adobe Summit, but I had the opportunity to talk with Ohri and Marzin more in-depth. It’s #Matchpoint when it comes to tennis and digital and they are trying to serve up an ace!

Tom Evans, Chief Marketing Officer, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas

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An honor to be joined by Tom Evans, the Chief Marketing Officer, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

Tom has a wealth of experience with more than 20 years of experience in the field of hospitality marketing and advertising. He has been instrumental in the creation, branding and maintenance of multiple hospitality products. A key figure in the creation of two in-house marketing and advertising departments and has opened 10+ resorts and casinos in both Las Vegas and other gaming jurisdictions, and he’s here to talk about sports at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

He’s here to talk about:

• How he and his team are planning ahead with pro football coming and other big sporting events

• Partnership with the Golden Knights, and how much business and exposure that’s helped bring in

• Sports related topics and specifically how it affects business at the property and the Vegas market as a whole

It’s a time of transition in Las Vegas when it comes to sports and Tom and The Cosmopolitan are staying ahead of the curve, while making The Cosmopolitan the place to stay in Las Vegas for sports fans.

Enjoy this time with Tom and make your plans to stay at The Cosmopolitan.

Thomas Evans

Ken Grohe, Update of SignNow for Golf Tournaments and Spring Sports

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A pleasure to have Ken Grohe of SignNow, back on Tech of Sports with some updates.

Ken is in golf mode at he played TPC Sawgrass and is at the Masters.

He talks Legal, Compliance, HR, Sales, Hospitality, etc and the many uses of SignNow to:

Register the players, caddies, transportation, Pro-Ams, and volunteers
Run the Charity
VIP and Hospitality
Run the local and national PGA Fundraising
Coordinate the suppliers, event staffing, and schedules

Ken also talks about a recently announced a simplified process for sending and collecting forms for youth sports clubs, leagues, and tournaments with the SignNow e-signature platform. Powered by the SignNow REST API, SportsForms removes the hassle of managing paperwork such as medical waivers, concussion forms, codes of conduct, birth certificates, player pass photos and league player contracts, and empowers athletes and parents to electronically sign required documents securely from anywhere and any device.

SportsForms is a service company designed for sports team managers, club directors, tournament organizers and sports leagues to send, sign and save team paperwork electronically. Powered by SignNow, SportsForms takes virtually any paper document, digitizes it and makes it available for electronic completion and signature. Users receive a link to sign a document and complete it using a standard web browser, or iOS or Android device. Once completed, the documents are automatically made available online to the team manager or club administrators. SportsForms allows for the simple and efficient collection of documents without printers, scanners, fax machines or even paper, pens or ink.

“SignNow simplifies the joy of participation,” said Grohe. “The SignNow API was built with the developer in mind – easy to implement, manage and use with an intuitive interface designed for simplicity. Together with SportsForms, we’re empowering sports teams to remove the hassle of dealing with paperwork so they can focus on their players and the game.”

I’m sure more updates to come from SignNow.

Ken Grohe of SignNow

Richard Spurling, Founder and Executive Director of Aceing Autism

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Great to be joined by Aceing Autism’s Richard Spurling this week.

He’s doing fantastic work with putting tennis racquets in the hands of people who have never experienced tennis and success on the tennis court.

Richard attended Florida Atlantic University where he played Division I tennis and achieved his degree in International Business. Following graduation, Richard went on to teach tennis while maintaining his own pro status on the tour, including managing various high profile tennis programs in Florida, Boston and Cape Cod.

Richard earned his MBA in 2008 from Babson College where he focused on entrepreneurship. Richard lives in Los Angeles with his wife Shafali Jeste and their two children Nischal and Kiran.

Here is the vision of Aceing Autism:

With our organization now firmly established and with our program delivery model now proven to achieve meaningful benefits, for the foreseeable future we intend to grow the number of participants on an annual basis across the U.S. to 4,500 by the end of 2021. In so doing, we plan to be overseeing 80-90 program sites throughout the U.S. together with establishing the necessary operating and support infrastructure to successfully fund, maintain and improve our activities. Beyond the number of children served, we intend to enhance our program offerings, so as to achieve ever-improving service delivery outcomes for the children and families being served, volunteer training and engagement, as well as all other stakeholders. At the same time, we expect to improve our organization capacity so as to be positioned to serve a significantly larger population of participants thereafter. As we embark on this vision, we believe a variety of additional opportunities will emerge that will enable us to enhance our organization and the benefits delivered to our stakeholders in a variety of new and exciting ways.

Enjoy Rick’s talk with Richard!

Richard Spurling of Aceing Autism

Gavin Dear, CCO at Shot Scope

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Rick is joined by a great guy, Gavin Dear, of Shot Scope, an innovative golf tech company in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Shot Scope has now released their V2 here in the U.S. and it’s a great golf product to help improve your game and keep track of your personal golf data.

Shot Scope is out of pre-sale and available for purchase. The pre-sale of V2 ran from August to November, 2017 and gave golfers the opportunity to purchase the product at a reduced introductory price. Golfers from 32 countries took advantage of this limited-time offer and have since amassed over 8,000 rounds of golf, despite being off-season in most countries.

Shot Scope information can be found at www.shotscope.com.

Shot Scope is easy to use as it’s a watch that give your real-time data.

Shot Scope V2 is fully waterproof and adjusts to 11 wrist-sizes. The system includes 20 lightweight tags which screw into your clubs and can be customized in your account to identify what is in your bag.

It has three modes; GPS, PRO and GPS+Track to suit different playing environments.

Dynamic Yardages

An in-built Smart GPS chip provides dynamic Front/Middle/Back distances, in meters or yards, from anywhere on the course. Distances update with every adjustment, based on detailed course mapping, giving you more accurate information than competitor products.
Automatic performance tracking

Industry-leading technology works in the background to automatically collect performance data. Wearing V2 as a watch allows it to communicate with the tags in the grip of your clubs, gathering data for post-round analysis completely in the background.

Upload

Data is uploaded via USB or Bluetooth to free iOS, Android or Desktop apps.

Review

Access a unique perspective of your game by reviewing your shots on an overhead course map. Every shot is plotted onto the course using GPS, so you can relive and review every round.

Improve

Over 100 Tour-level statistics are broken down into four key sections: tee shots, approaches, short game and putting. Using interactive graphs, maps and charts the data comes alive and provides invaluable information for on and off course game management and improvement.

Gavin played college golf here in the US as an elite golfer for 11 years (amateur and professional), including representing GB and I in the 2009 Walker Cup.

Great to talk with Gavin and get your Shot Scope here.

Gavin Dear of Shot Scope

Juan Carlos Báguena, Former ATP Tour Tennis Player for Sportco

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Sportco is looking to change the way fans experience their favorite sports.

How is the Spanish tennis player going to change the lives of all sports fans?

Rick is joined by former Spanish ATP Tour player, Juan Carlos Báguena, this week.

A surprising move, linking sport and technology, is designed to change people’s news consumption and upgrade the status of sports fans in the media

The former ATP tennis player, Báguena, will act as a Sports Advisor in a new venture. Báguena, reached the semi-finals in Hypo Group Tennis International at Bari, Italy, in 1988. He made the second round of the men’s doubles in the 1989 French Open (Roland Garros) in Paris. His career highlight happened in 1990 when Báguena teamed up with Omar Camporese (Ranked 18 in his prime) to win the Madrid Grand Prix Trophy. The Spaniard made his best performance of the year in Florence, where he and Carlos Costa, one of the leading clay court players in the early 1990s, were doubles runners-up.

Báguena chose to partner with Sportco – a site which gathers sports fans discourse, using an innovative technology which will reward readers for any involvement on the site. The fascinating tech project seeks to unite all sports fans under one umbrella brand and change the way sports fans will play a role in the future of sports media.

Sportco recently announced to its 500k readers, in a statement published on their websites, that an algorithm will measure their readers’ involvement and reward them with sports tickets and merchandises for any action they perform on the site, whether it’s content writing, sharing, etc. Sportco currently possesses sports fans community platforms (websites, apps, social media channels) such as Cricwizz, Sportswizz, SportsQwizz, Sportswizzleague and more.

Báguena expressed his support in an announcement on the Sportco’s website: “Sports is an industry that is motivated by passion, by both players and fans, and Sportco’s platform takes it to the next step. The project was aided by brilliant technology that reached maturity, and I was very sympathized with the idea that in essence put the sports fans in the center. I see the project as great potential and real news in the field of communications and sports”.

Báguena remained close to sports after retiring and currently coaches the future generation of Tennis at the Barcelona Tennis Training Center.

Juan Carlos Baguena