Tag: Skiing

What’s the Purpose of Professional Sports – Provide Entertainment or Determine a Winner?

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Ted Ligety is a great skier and a vocal proponent for increasing the visibility of ski racing. This can be seen in the comments that follow.

“I’ve always believed ski racing is presented and formatted poorly. I can’t think of any successful sports that have a 3-hour half time and fans only see their favorite athlete twice for a max of 4 minutes. I can’t imagine going to a basketball game to watch Lebron James play for 1 minute then wait 3-hours to see him play for another minute. It would not make sense for TV or the fans. Yet this is how a ski race is run. I race at 9am for 1 minute 20 then wait until 1:30pm to do my second run. How is a fan supposed to get into that, live or on TV?”

“Along with formatting changes, every GS and SL should be held at night. That way most tourists near the area of the race (significant number in most winter resort areas) would come to the race for evening entertainment, instead of now most skiers prefer to ski during the day, so the race misses a huge number of spectators at the venue and on TV because people are skiing. (As they should be). This would also create a party atmosphere since there could be a band playing (like Rockfest) which would draw more than just hardcore ski fans, which should be the goal.”

Legity’s comments raise a number of questions, some of which are listed below.

• What is the purpose of professional sports – to determine a winner or entertain a crowd?
• Does the fact that skiing is a winter sport limit its appeal as a spectator sport – no matter the format?
• By proprosing these changes, what is Legity ultimately trying to market?
• Would Legity’s proposed format increase sponsorship, viewership, onsite attendance, and prize money? If so, by how much?
• How would the new format benefit the sport? Would it increase participation, equipment sales, and lesson activity?
• Would the new format give an advantage to a different group of skiers, for example, those who can see better at night?
• Is there other technology that could be used to cover or make the current format more interesting?
• Using Legity’s logic, should Wimbledon be reduced from a two-week tournament to a fast serve contest so that fans could see all their favorites in action in a shorter period of time?

Legity has provided food for thought about skiing and other sports.  Do his ideas have merit or not?

 

Technology in Sports Equipment – Ski Goggles

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Skiers and boarders get all the cool stuff!

They wear jackets that are warmer and lighter and they have mobile aps to keep track of their number of runs on the slopes. Thanks to Zeal Optics of Boulder, they now have goggles with a built-in camera to capture all their bumps and turns on the slopes.

In touting their iON goggle, the company’s press release stated, “The goggle-wearer pushes buttons located on the outside of the goggles to operate the camera. The goggles have a viewfinder and controls that run on a rechargeable battery that works for up to six hours. The camera in the goggles has a 170-degree wide-angle lens to capture images in a “wide periphery.” The goggles come with software that allows users to adjust camera settings. Videos and pictures can be downloaded to computers through a mini-USB connection. The goggles also have a micro-SD card that can be used to show the videos and pictures on computers and TVs. Other goggles from Zeal offer GPS-related information that allows users to track altitude, speed, and temperature. The new goggles retail for $399.”

Will the iON goggles be a big hit? Can the goggles be used in ways that allow skiers to improve their skills or are they strictly an entertainment device? Will owners find crossover uses for their goggles – mountain biking, rock climbing, gardening, mowing the lawn, or après-ski activity? Will Zeal develop comparable products to allow sports enthusiasts to record the big ace on match point, the hole-in-one, or the diving catch to capture the city softball championship?

Sports are no longer as simple as they once were – strap on your skis and have a good time. For better or worse, technology has become a bigger part of the way enthusiasts enjoy their favorite sport. And it has become necessary for manufacturers to develop new products and continually change (and hopefully improve) their current product lines to stay afloat.

Further information about Zeal Optics can be found at www.zealoptics.com.

 

Mobile Apps Hit the Slopes

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When I first got my smart phone I couldn’t wait to tell my wife about all of the great applications – the New York Times, NFL Mobile, and Navigation.  She couldn’t wait to tell me about Angry Birds.

Very quickly, I learned that applications were called apps and there is an app for just about everything. To illustrate this point I had a skier friend enthusiastically tell me about the apps for his sport as he drove up to the slopes for the last run of the 2010-2011 season. I am not a frequent skier, but his discussion about the use of apps in his sport was intriguing.

As I quickly learned, Colorado’s ski companies are using social media (Facebook, Twitter, and mobile applications) to let the world know about everything from recent snowfall to special online deals to number of runs skied.

One of my friends favorite apps used the RFID tags on season tickets to track the number of days skied and vertical miles logged. He and his buddies used the app for “bragging rights” and to determine who bought the beers at the end of the day. Another option allows users with smart phones to get alerts when friends are on the mountain. Obviously, users had to opt into these options to allow this type of tracking.

Another app, Realski, allows users to take pictures and geotag them. On the slopes, users can then relocate that special powder or terrain. Off the slopes it may be used to help find the car in the parking lot after a long day on the slopes or a late night in the watering holes.

Ski operators market the mobile apps as a tool for enhancing the skier/boarder experience. As well, they also see it as an opportunity to increase communications with their customers and strengthen brand loyalty. In theory everyone wins.

This brief post is not intended to be a comprehensive review of ski and boarder mobile aps, rather it illustrates how they are being applied to recreation activities to improve a person’s  sporting experience and to strengthen companys’ financial stakes in those sports. Watch for similar apps in your favorite sports and recreational activities.