News readers of the 21st century are not interested in detail…but instead are looking for the most important information as quickly as possible. Technology has created this need-for- speed mentality that has infiltrated almost all industries—including the sports world. There is a heavy reliance on digital media not only to tell fans what happened at games, but to promote games beforehand.
The fast-paced nature of sports like football and basketball especially, make it challenging for journalists and fans to keep up with what is happening. Through technology, athletic departments are now able to provide live information for fans, journalists, and anyone interested in learning about the sport.
Technology companies, like SIDEARM sports, STATS and Stat broadcast, all provide websites to clients that allow for live stats, live streaming, videos and more. Fans can access this information from their mobile devices, social media, and their computers instantaneously.
Reed Findley, the corporate communications manager at STAT, explained that the company helps different athletic organizations have live data. They create “scoreboards and help create live data for teams at a higher professional sports level…[but] we [also] help a lot of schools.”
The College of New Jersey uses SIDEARM Sports to support its live stats for TCNJ athletics.
“The Live Stats interface features team names, colors, logos, play-by-play, traditional box score information, and the ability to link up rosters to display player head shots and link to the player bio on your SIDEARM site,” according to the SIDEARM website.
According to their website, SIDEARM powers 1,007 websites for college and university DI, DII or DIII programs, NJCAA, etc. This company offers live stats for baseball, basketball, field hockey, lacrosse, ice hockey, softball, soccer and volleyball.
These companies can either create a new website on behalf of the athletic organization, or it can work with the existing software to incorporate live stats into the preexisting website.
So how do live stats work? Someone needs to manually input all the information as it happens live.
“Basically we’re just inputting code into a computer, “ according to Norman Yacko, TCNJ’s sports information specialist, “that is basically taking everything, formatting it correctly, and displaying it in a format that everyone can read and understand.”
Live stats also provide a detailed account of what’s happening in the game in real time. Even if a fan can’t make the game, they can still go online to check on the live stats to get the play-by-play.
The goal is to communicate data to fans as quickly and clearly as possible—and to pique their interest. The more fans know, the more invested they will be. The more invested fans are, the more likely fans will spend money to go to stadiums for a live experience, although, the experience away from the stadium may provide fans with just as much if not more information about the game.
“Technology has gotten so much better, the fan experience is almost better to watch a game on television than it is to be there in person, so one of the ways that they’re trying to combat that is to put better Wi-Fi in and stuff like that for the fans,” said Yacko.
These statistics aren’t just important for fans—but for players themselves. Having a systematic approach to recording statistics, and having cameras record their every move helps players see where they need to improve.
“Some of the things that we’re allowed to do now, for example, like our basketball team, we provide them with some of the stats, and then they can go and implement [new tactics],” said Yacko.
It provides a direct answer to questions players might have about how they’re preforming. These stats reflect how well the team is doing overall, and team coaches can take these statistics and analyze them to determine the team’s strength’s and weaknesses. These live stats also provide information about the opposing team, so the fans can learn more about who their favorite team is up against.
Yacko had previously been at Rider before coming to TCNJ, and had some insight into their athletic program: “Rider was one of the first schools in the country to do live stats, thanks to some of the people that were there…they were really on the forefront of that sort of technology.”
Colleges did not always have live stats to track everything that happened during a game. If you missed a game, you’d have to wait until the next day to learn about what happened in the newspaper or through word of mouth.
“Early 2000s is when [live stats] really started to come along. It really started to spread out to a lot of other schools,” said Yacko, “Before, if you weren’t able to be at the game, you had no idea what was going on until, maybe you saw it in the paper the next day.”
Fans and journalists are adjusting to a changes as technology updates, but internally the athletic department feels these changes too. There is a heavy focus on social media and video to promote college athletics. It serves as another tool that athletic departments can use to connect with fans.
“We have someone that comes in now,” Yacko said, “that it’s their entire job to just update Twitter and Instagram for us. That’s literally an entire job…at each game it’s someone’s job to [update social media].”
“Social media has [caused] a huge change to what we do,” continued Yacko, “before it was, you were writing for a newspaper or print journalism where you’d watch the game and write a recap. Now so much of it is instantaneous.”
Through digital technology, fan experience has become all the more interactive. It can connect and engage fans like never before. With technology like live stats available to the public, journalists can focus on analyzing the game and drawing attention to trends or other.
“It’s almost becoming a technology-driven position here, rather than a traditional journalism position,” said Yacko, “I think that’s something where, it’s a little bit different of a trend than you would expect…but it really is for the benefit of the fans.”
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