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8 Ways Technology has Changed Sports
By Baselinemag on 2009-04-30


Sports fans are tracking NBA and NHL playoff games on their iPhones, streaming audio of their favorite baseball team's games at the office, and posting shots of their kids' soccer games on Flickr.

But technological innovation not only has transformed the way we interact with sports over the past 10-15 years, it's altered the sports themselves.

In the spirit of spring fever, here's our look at the most dramatic changes technology has wreaked on sports.
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Clothing and equipment design Computing power applied to areas such as motion capture and 3D modeling have revolutionized the design of everything from shoes, uniforms and swimsuits to helmets, golf clubs and bikes. Of course, this has helped us all improve our play, and look better doing so.

Stadium experience Today's billion-dollar palaces are not your grandfather's stadiums - and they're probably unfamiliar to you, too. Giant high-definition scoreboards, wireless in-seat food orders, and hitting simulators that pit kids against their favorite big league pitchers have turned the pastoral fields of yesteryear into high-tech sports amusement parks

Ticket purchasing Sports have been transformed by the growth of E-commerce. Gone are the days of worrying about getting tickets for that big game-visit Stubhub.com, FirstRowTickets.com, or a host of other sites, and you can have whatever seats you want, in a mobile digital format, within minutes. Don't get us started on those ludicrous "delivery fees."

Fantasy sports Sure, there'd be fantasy sports with or without the Internet. But online fantasy-tracking tools from Yahoo! Sports and the like have expanded the fantasy universe from thousands to millions, converting workplace cubicles into procrastination centers and placing yet more strain on the modern marriage.

Training tools Practice isn't just practice anymore, it's analysis. Advances in video and body-measurement technologies, combined with increasingly sophisticated software, allow athletes to break down their every movement, and to be more in touch with the workings of their bodies than ever before.

News flow Sports and the media that cover them have taken advantage of the Internet and wireless devices to ensure that their product is never more than a click away. And device-wielding sports nuts have never before had the opportunity to waste their time with such reckless abandon.

Visual record Digital cameras allow sports photographers to shoot constantly throughout a game without running out of film, and those images can be dispersed more quickly than ever. The advent of high-definition TV has brought the games into our living rooms with eye-popping detail, and TiVo enables us to watch those images over and over again. See: marriage strain.

Player-media-fan connection Perhaps the greatest technology-fueled change has been in the relationship between fans, media, and the athletes themselves. The advent of blogs and social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook have enabled athletes, beat writers, columnists, and the public to engage directly in real-time discourse - for better or worse.

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