In the second part of his virtual roundtable series looking at tech-supported innovation in sport, CQU’s Professor Fabio Serpiello turns the light on the widespread lack of structured decision-making processes in sport.
The Director of Sport Strategy at Central Queensland University led the second instalment of a three-part Leaders Virtual Roundtable series aimed at exploring the dynamics of tech-supported innovation in sport.
As host, Serpiello wanted to “provide frameworks and stimulate discussion on how to select the right technology for performance challenges, ensuring decisions align with strategy and context.”
The Leaders Trend Report earlier this year highlighted that fewer than half of practitioners can point to a structured decision-making process within their organisation. Many have lamented this with Serpiello, which stands to reason as nearly all respondents in the report perceive such a structure as important.
It starts with a clear performance question, as a sports scientist working in European football put it.
She said: “If we’re going to make a decision, we have to have something well-structured. We need to ask what do we want from what we’re collecting or what do we want from what we’re asking the athletes to do.”
Another attendee, with oversight of several sports, recalled their own situation with problem clarification. “The solution looked like the key, but many sports were unclear on the problem.”
Serpiello presented the group with two models to address this issue.
Greg Satell’s Model of Innovation
Innovation, Serpiello argues, comes in several shapes and forms depending on the nature of the problem. To make his point, he introduced renowned change management specialist Greg Satell’s Model of Innovation, which provides a practical framework for introducing innovative practices, encourages strategic thinking about problems and helps to facilitate better collaboration.
He presented a diagram of Satell’s model to the table:
Serpiello had previously shared his thoughts on each quadrant:
Basic research – a low understanding of both domain and problem: “We don’t really know what the problem is and we don’t really know in which field or area it happens.”
Disruptive innovation – a well-understood domain but poorly understood problem: “In this area you may need something like innovation labs or launch pads.”
Breakthrough innovation – a poorly understood domain but well-defined problem: “This is the reverse of disruptive innovation… the classic example of open innovation.”
Sustaining innovation – a well-understood domain and problem: “The most common form in sport [and often the subject of] continuous research, design thinking or road mapping.”
A fuller account can be found here.
A general manager of a successful Paralympic programme gave an example of breakthrough innovation in their work supporting totally blind swimmers:
“We’re working with our institute partners and also reaching out to universities to understand if there’s interest in terms of product development and research in this space.”
There is a clear problem, the domain is less defined, and the organisation is piloting new concepts.
Another attendee working in the Olympic and Paralympic system spoke of an example of disruptive innovation when their team sought coaching tools, primarily:
“The piloting was done with the university [engineering department]… the final year project has to be sponsored, innovative, and they’re graded on the finish of the product and customer satisfaction… they were constantly in touch with us, so in terms of getting clear on the problem and implementing a solution, they were fantastic, these young engineers… The projects that succeeded were embedded into sport, and it was because the engineer was back and forth with the client, with us, and with the athletes.”
The Cynefin Framework
Serpiello then reacquainted the table with the Cynefin Framework.
‘Cynefin’, which is pronounced ‘ku-nev-in’, is a Welsh word that signifies ‘the multiple factors in our environment and our experience that influence us in ways we can never understand,’ as Snowden and Boon wrote in their 2007 Harvard Business Review essay titled ‘A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making’.
The Cynefin Framework, they continued, ‘helps leaders determine the prevailing operative context so they can make appropriate choices’.
Source: HBR
The framework classifies decision-making contexts into five domains:
“The Cynefin Framework essentially classifies decision-making on the continuum between order and unordered conditions,” said Serpiello, adding, “because if you make the wrong decision, or if you use the wrong quadrant, you may waste a lot of time without actually getting to the right answer.”
He cited the example of tracking tech companies selling their wares as the answer to complicated and complex problems. “What tracking technology should do really well, in my opinion, is give you the ability to quickly categorise what’s happening in training and then respond properly, whether it is a load management, readiness or a recovery response.”
Other ideas
What to read next
In a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable, Simon Eastwood of Management Futures presented a series of models and tips for leaders in sport.
As Eastwood, the Head of Leadership Skills at Management Futures, explained, the wrong word, tone, timing or even body language from a coach can trigger a negative reaction when giving an athlete feedback.
Every Leaders Performance Institute member attending this virtual roundtable has been there; and Eastwood, as host of the session, began by posing this question:
When giving feedback, what do you notice that people say or do, or that perhaps you might have said or done, that can trigger a negative response?
Members at the table raised some familiar themes, including:
Switching tack, Eastwood posed a second question:
What types of feedback help people to improve both quickly and positively?
The table suggested feedback that is:
To help the members at the table strike that balance, Eastwood introduced them to the SCARF model.
The SCARF model
This framework, devised by neuroscientist David Rock, explains five domains that influence human social behaviour and motivation. SCARF stands for:
“It’s a great tool for stepping back and assessing your team and thinking about what really makes them tick,” said Eastwood. “Crucially, it’s not about avoiding that feedback.”
He suggested that leaders should reward these needs through feedback, so people feel valued and motivated rather than threatened and, to illustrate his point, presented a table that set out what ‘threat’ and ‘reward’ may look like in each domain:
Eastwood then pivoted to his next question:
When giving positive feedback, which elements do you find most need to be reinforced?
The table responded across each domain:
Status
Certainty
Autonomy
Relatedness
Fairness
The Feedforward model
Eastwood then moved the conversation on to what leaders can do to help individuals improve future performance rather than dwell on past mistakes.
To that end, he introduced the table to executive coach Marshall Goldsmith’s Feedforward model.
While Eastwood admitted the term “can feel a little bit contrived as a title”, he feels it enables productive feedback conversations by placing the emphasis on the future:
As Eastwood explained, conversations that feedforward:
Eastwood: “It doesn’t mean that you don’t address something that needs to be changed or improved, but it just means that rather than focus on what’s not gone well, you focus on what could go well next time.”
On the SCARF model: this means reduced risk of triggering status or fairness threats by avoiding blame.
Eastwood: “Instead of spending time looking back, the idea here is: how could you hold your position next time and still maintain the athlete-coach relationship?”
On the SCARF model: this supports athlete autonomy by inviting them to co-design solutions.
Eastwood: “It feels less threatening because it offers a range of possibilities. So you’re not really addressing what they’re not doing well, it’s just what they could do in the future.”
On the SCARF model: this reduces certainty and status threats by framing feedback as future-focused and constructive.
Eastwood: “They’re possibly looking out for more and asking ‘how I can be even better?’”
On the SCARF model: this taps into status and relatedness as motivating forces.
Eastwood: “It comes across more of a coaching opportunity, and it has to develop focus, which shows care rather than telling off.”
On the SCARF model: it places an emphasis on relatedness and fairness.
Eastwood then posed a final question to the table:
The next time you give feedback, what will you do better?
Attendees provided a range of responses:
“I think I will ask my team to think about the way they would like to receive feedback as individuals.”
“Improve the speed at which we provide feedback. Do it more regularly and get to it quicker.”
“I want to encourage to speak to our coaches to think about these two models because they struggle to give good feedback to our young athletes.”
“I want to hold group feedback sessions where you present something you want to get feedback on.”
“With the athlete’s input, we can create a more individualised starting point that makes sense to them.”
To wrap things up, Eastwood suggested that attendees start making changes within seven days. He said: “They’re easy to have as a theory and they stay a theory until you actually actively use them.”
The organisation has incorporated technology from NeckCare, a wearable head device that measures neck function through sensorimotor exercises and provides insights into the into the return-to-play concussion protocols of athletes at its UFC Performance Institute locations.
Main Photo: Getty Images
Heather Linden, UFC’s Director/Sports Medicine, told SBJ that over the past two years, UFC has collected data from 300-400 athletes, which will be used to establish baseline data on its athlete population’s neck function and inform future assessments.
The impetus behind the collaboration for UFC was to add more objectivity into its head injury assessments.
“It’s very easy to prescribe a knee rehab with — the range of motion is lacking, their peak torque-to-bodyweight [ratio] is this, their isokinetic strength testing is this. It’s really easy to say, ‘You’re not ready to return to sport,’” Linden said. “But in the concussion realm, a lot of times you can’t see the symptoms … By having NeckCare and having that objectivity and showing [athletes], ‘Hey, cognitively you’re performing like this normally and you’re not here’ — that now gives that competitive edge to [athlete] buy-in.”
UFC utilizes two NeckCare devices in the physical therapy clinics of each of its Performance Institute locations in Las Vegas, Mexico City and Shanghai. It uses NeckCare’s range of motion and neck position exercises as a part of its head injury evaluation process, and also for recovery/training purposes, Linden added.
NeckCare CEO Orri Gudmundsson said the primary focus for the company, which went to market about two years ago, is to sell into health clinics, but it also works with multiple NCAA football programs and Twin Cities Orthopedics, which treats NFL and NHL athletes, in addition to UFC.
“If you suffer a concussion, the neck is always involved,” Gudmundsson said. “Cervicogenic [originating from the neck but felt in the head] headaches, cervicogenic dizziness — that’s where we come in with technology that’s been in research and development for more than 20 years, to quantify the function of the neck and how your eyes, your brain and your neck are talking together.”
NeckCare’s devices, which are FDA-listed, price at $6,000 per year. The company overall works with more than 250 providers across North America.
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
The former US tennis star made the unconventional move of moving into venture capitalism.
Main Photo: Getty Images
At age 15, she was the No. 1 junior tennis player in the world. By four months after her 18th birthday, she’d climbed as high as 35 in the WTA rankings and reached two (of an eventual three) Grand Slam singles third rounds.
But after injuries forced her to retire in 2021, Bellis is now showing similar precociousness in a new endeavor — venture capital.
In mid-2023, Bellis launched an eponymous sports technology investment firm called Cartan Capital (her full name is Catherine Cartan). It has raised two funds — the first a $10 million pledge fund sourced from 15 investors, the second a larger fund that is nearly closed and deploying capital — and made eight investments.
“I grew up in Silicon Valley, so I felt like I was around venture from a young age,” said Bellis, 26, and an Atherton, California, native. “I grew up solely focused on tennis. … But school was always a big part of my life and something that my parents instilled in me — how important education is — from a young age. … I knew that I wanted to always have a backup plan.”
Catherine Bellis took the first set from Victoria Azarenka at Wimbledon in 2017. (Photo by Lindsey Parnaby/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Bellis initially committed to Stanford, her dream school, but after cracking the WTA top 100 as a teenager, decided to go all-in on tennis. While playing, she pursued an undergraduate degree in business administration from Indiana University through a scholarship program facilitated by the WTA — eventually giving the commencement address for her graduating class in 2022 — then got her MBA at the University of Miami.
Her first professional break came through an internship with Orlando-based Tavistock Development Co., which she parlayed into another internship — and eventual promotion to investment analyst — with leAD Sports & Health Tech Partners.
Longtime venture investor Martin Mann, now a Cartan Capital partner and the largest backer of the firm’s first fund, met Bellis through his work on the board of the USTA Foundation, but remembers being “over-the-top impressed” by her straight-shooting answers to due diligence questions after she brought him in to meet with leAD during her time there.
“When she left to start Cartan, she called me and asked me if I would be an adviser. I thought it was a little shocking that she was jumping off after only a few years in venture capital,” Mann said. “But there are some people — and they are few and far between that I’ve seen — that are just more extraordinary than humans should be.”
Cartan Capital focuses primarily on participating in Series A or later-stage seed rounds, led by other firms, across sports, technology, health and wellness. Its portfolio consists of several startups that have made waves through partnerships with major leagues and media properties, including audio innovation company Edge Sound Research, AI-powered musculature analysis platform Springbok Analytics, interactive hologram maker Proto Hologram and TGL creator TMRW Sports.
Bellis’ reputation with her portfolio companies is that of an attentive, hands-on and well-sourced partner adept at facilitating connections — whether in business development or hiring — and providing an athlete’s perspective.
“She has a determination to support all their portfolio companies,” said Edge Sound Research CEO Valtteri Salomaki. “That’s rare with a smaller fund like hers, because usually — I mean, X amount of resources, X amount of time. … For her to not only source and understand companies, but then also from there be able to support those companies, her personality is clearly [that] she cares.”
CiCi Bellis, center, attends the Break The Love and Tory Sport private celebration in honor of Women’s History Month and The Miami Open in March 2022. Also pictured (L-r): Trisha Goyal, Marissa E. Hill, Taylor Townsend, Jessica Pegula, Christina McHale and Bethanie Mattek-Sands. (Photo by Desiree Navarro/Getty Images)
Bellis also began a two-year term as a director-at-large (elite athlete) on the USTA’s board this year, where, as has become custom, she is the youngest in the room. She has distinguished herself there by serving on several committees, including the USTA Investment Committee, USTA Ventures Committee and two athlete committees.
Bill McGugin, USTA Ventures chairman and fellow board member, said Bellis has made a particular impact in deal sourcing and analysis for the organization’s venture arm, which has made three investments since launching two years ago.
“Though she’s relatively young, you feel like you’re talking to someone that’s been in the profession for 20 years,” McGugin said of Bellis. “Her awareness of the market, her awareness of financial structuring, her connections to other investment firms and opportunities. … [Working with her has] been very positive.”
Bellis said the discipline she developed as an athlete has aided her transition to her next phase.
“My work ethic and dedication that I brought from my day-in, day-out tennis career and all the hours that it takes to be a pro athlete — I was able to catch on really quickly based on the work that I did outside of work, making sure I was up to speed on everything going on and learning about venture,” she said. “Just being scrappy.”
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
Too often, soccer clubs across the globe fall foul of almost hidden contract clauses. TransferRoom’s Contingency AI is helping an increasing number of teams to navigate that space.
Main Photo: TransferRoom
And in that time, I saw a trend I assumed to be purely anecdotal to a still-fledgling soccer nut: add-on fees in player contracts. I felt like I was noticing a growing population of them. The mechanism accounts for future bonuses due to player on-field performance (appearances, goals, etc.) and fits into a complex ecosystem that also features loan-to-buy options, sell-on fees and more.
Turns out, soccer contingency payments like this have indeed been on the rise. According to the international soccer marketplace TransferRoom, these contract features have increased 5x in the last 10 years. That promptly demanded a tool that fits the landscape for the company’s massive soccer clientele list: TransferRoom’s Contingency AI. Deployed in August, this creation helps TransferRoom football clubs track these potential payments or capital injections to maintain accurate budgeting.
Simon Ankersen, TransferRoom’s Director of Football Relations, highlighted that the company has more than 800 clubs on its platform, which includes the MLS and its 30 teams, and all of them feel varying impacts around this growing contract structure trend. A brutal pain-point combination — the manual and constant contract scanning process paired with the churn inside football offices — exposed a clear need for a monitoring tool.
“Clubs are getting more and more creative with these clauses because they want to de-risk their purchases,” Ankersen said. “The operations are getting bigger, the deals are getting bigger, so therefore you have more people involved in it.”
Ankersen told me the feature has already produced savings for clubs, as well as found forgotten clauses that had been achieved, which helped teams scratch up a little more transfer-room capital to secure player acquisitions.
Beat Flückiger, the CFO for BSC Young Boys in the Swiss Super League, said the biggest risk for a smaller league club is not recognizing the earnings it’s due. He said he used to rely on a large Microsoft Excel file, pulling the figures of each contract in manually. But contracts can vary in terms — one may say an appearance is the moment a player hits the field, while another will dictate a 45-minute threshold.
“[The club was] using different data sources but never came to the point where it’s 100% satisfying,” Flückiger said. “And the clauses are so different in every contract, it’s almost impossible to do this on your own.”
TransferRoom began developing this feature in the spring. Ankersen added that the spin-up time of any project is now dramatically improved from the startup days. The company was founded in 2016 and now has approximately 150 full-time employees.
Expect more innovation from TransferRoom later this year. Ankersen shared that the company is working on another feature that will let teams forecast potential player purchases and how they could affect profit and loss, as well as help Premier League teams navigate the league’s Profit and Sustainability Rules.
“We are just unearthing more and more pain points,” Ankersen said.
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
PlayerData’s new FIFA-approved GPS and LPS units are a hit across the world of soccer and can be used by athletes in the offseason.
Main Photo: Getty Images
Other strategic investors in the Techstars-backed company include Pentland Ventures, Accelerate Ventures, Hiro Capital, and angels who previously invested in Strava and Revolut.
PlayerData’s new product, the Edge Air Tracker, is about half the size of competitors, and it combines GPS and LPS tracking, the latter an indoor alternative when satellite coverage is not available. The LPS system uses portable beacons that the company says can be set up in less than an hour. The Edge Air Tracker received the higher-standard FIFA Quality certification this summer.
“We had to build it in a PlayerData way: easy to use, fits in a backpack, mobile and affordable,” said CCO Jess Brodsky. “What gets us going is we get to give something to people that is just as elite quality — we don’t sacrifice on data quality — but to everybody.”
PlayerData’s Edge Air Tracker combines GPS and LPS tracking, the latter an indoor alternative when satellite coverage is not available. (Image: PlayerData)
The founding story is that, a decade ago, University of Edinburgh student Roy Hotrabhavanon had fashioned his own training tech to compete in archery by taking parts from consumer box retailers. Realizing there was little business upside in a niche sport, he sought to build for soccer instead, discovering there was a market gap particularly for grassroots, academy, university and women’s clubs who didn’t have the budget for an incumbent system such as Catapult or StatSports.
PlayerData is ubiquitous in the UK, where it records data from 94% of the country’s soccer pitches, Brodsky said, noting that the total includes the Premier League because its officials wear the monitoring devices during matches. The startup moved into the US market about two years ago, and Brodsky said the company has doubled or tripled its ARR (annual recurring revenue) in each of the past five years, building up to about 60,000 sensors in the market.
One of the biggest recent additions to the client roster is IMG Academy, where nearly 1,000 student-athletes will use the technology. The soccer program will install solar-powered beacons around all 15 soccer fields, and PlayerData and IMG will collaborate on developing and soft-launching sport-specific experiences in the app for volleyball and softball.
Abi Goldberg, an assistant strength and conditioning coach at Rutgers, supports the men’s and women’s soccer program whose seasons are concurrent, meaning she is balancing the training needs of both with little overlap. The use of PlayerData with both teams, Goldberg said, is helpful because the hardware and software systems are “incredibly user-friendly,” allowing her to review the data and communicate it the coaches even if it’s just a short window between their practices.
Often, each team’s director of operations will be tasked with overseeing PlayerData use at road games, but Goldberg said the tech doesn’t require an S&C professional to manage. She has even loaned devices to a few of the athletes for use in the offseason.
“Most GPS systems are in a big heavy briefcase-looking thing — I think there’s some been security nightmares in the airport — but these are way more compact,” she said. “They can put it in their backpack.”
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
Artificial Intelligence could be making key calls in your sport.
Main Photo: Getty Images
Current automation: NASCAR’s Optical Scanning Station maps the exterior of cars to ensure they comply with the rules. Bolt6 cameras also inspect the underbody of cars and operate the Pit Road Officiating system to flag violations.
Possible on the horizon? NASCAR intends to upgrade existing tech.
Current automation: The automated ball-strike challenge system is used throughout minor league baseball. A full ABS system is used by the KBO.
Possible on the horizon? MLB is likely to adopt the ABS challenge system for the 2026 season. It is also in the early stages of low-minors testing whether checked-swing calls can be automated.
Current automation: The NBA provides enhanced replays augmented with tracking data to assist with goaltending and basket interference calls.
Possible on the horizon? Determining who last touched the ball out-of-bounds and whether a shooter was behind the three-point line are under development, as are shot clock and other timed-based violations. The tech will start in the NBA, but it already is being investigated for the WNBA, too.
Current automation: The NFL will measure for first downs with Hawk-Eye cameras this season and contribute to calls about where punts fly out of bounds.
Possible on the horizon? The NFL and its innovation-minded collaborator, the UFL, are looking into whether the ball can be spotted after each play using technology, as well as making determinations on whether the quarterback is in the pocket (for intentional grounding and roughing the passer calls) or whether there are too many men on the field.
Current automation: The AI-powered Judging Support System is used as one input in the total score.
Possible on the horizon? There has been no report to date that gymnastics would consider full automation of scoring.
Current automation: None
Possible on the horizon? The NHL could use tech to determine offside, goal or no goal or whether a player high-sticked the puck.
Current automation: Rugby balls with embedded Sportable sensors were trialed at international youth tournaments to determine whether a ball was thrown forward, where a ball exited the pitch, whether a ball was touched in flight, whether the ball has reached the try-line and whether a lineout throw was straight. A Touchfinder feature helps Six Nations make boundary and ball spotting calls.
Possible on the horizon? Conversations around possible expansion of the tech are ongoing.
Current automation: Goal-line technology determines whether a goal is scored, and enhanced semi-automated offside technology makes all but the closest calls automatically.
Possible on the horizon? FIFA is researching whether technology can identify the player who last touched a ball before it went out of bounds. Detecting hand balls is also possible.
Current automation: All line calls can be called electronically.
Possible on the horizon? Technology could help determine whether there was a second bounce or a let serve. Electronic line calling will continue to move downstream into college and juniors tennis.
Current automation: AI judging will be one input in the total score beginning with the January 2026 X Games.
Possible on the horizon? Full automation of scoring might be possible.
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
The one clear theme across most sports is that human officials should be supplemented, not replaced, by AI.
Main Photo: Getty Images
There were also 20 4K optical tracking cameras triangulating motion from the players and ball. A few infrared cameras operated lightly in the background. The NBA is building a new R&D lab at the G League home of the Salt Lake City Stars. The lab will feature multiple tracking systems, connected basketballs and more to test a variety of on-court technology “with the top priority being officiating,” said NBA Senior Vice President Tom Ryan.
The NBA has created an automated officiating group within its Basketball Strategy & Growth Department, hiring data scientists and engineers — led by Avinash Bhaskaran, previously of Nvidia and autonomous vehicle company Cruise — to create a new, league-operated technology stack. Its three main purposes are to improve call accuracy and consistency, hasten game flow and enhance transparency and consumer confidence.
“You’re trying to trade off speed versus accuracy versus entertainment.”
Rufus Hack, CEO of Sony’s sports businesses
A recurring refrain from the more than two dozen insiders across sports that Sports Business Journal spoke to was that human officials, referees and umpires are far better at their jobs than fans will ever give them credit for, and few are seeking full automation of officiating; just supplementary aids. But they also have an inherent limitation of using only two eyes from one viewpoint, tracking projectiles that can travel in excess of 100 mph.
“At some point,” said SMT CEO Gerard J Hall, “that technology is more accurate than any human could ever pretend it to be.”
The presence of instant replay is ubiquitous in modern sports, but there’s a newfound emphasis on using technology not to review decisions, but to automate binary calls: ball or strike, in or out, offside or not? Tennis pioneered this practice with its adoption of Hawk-Eye Innovations’ cameras for line calls, first as a challenge system 20 years ago and now often used on every shot.
Automated officiating in baseball and other sports can help bring more accuracy and quicker decisions to games. But there are downsides to removing the human element from decisions. (Photo: Getty Images)
In recent years, that idea has spread downstream — junior tennis tournaments might have an iPhone or two mounted atop chain-link fences to call lines using an app called SwingVision — as well as to other sports. Every NFL stadium now has six Sony-owned, 8K Hawk-Eye cameras to virtually measure first downs and supplant the iconic, but archaic, chain gangs.
The Premier League adopted semi-automated offside technology last spring. MLB is likely to add a new challenge system for calling balls and strikes in 2026. The NHL, X Games, NASCAR and international gymnastics have all begun using or researching automated officiating principles as well.
How, why and even whether to implement such tech is thorny. Sports is approaching a tipping point where it reckons with how much of the human element to preserve, how much technology to deploy and the right balance of the two, putting human and machine in the best positions to succeed.
“All sports are wrestling with the right way to weave technology into the officiating of the game and to get as many calls right without making the game less entertaining and ruining the game’s rhythm and emotion and humanity,” said Morgan Sword, MLB’s Executive Vice president of Baseball Operations. “And it’s tricky. Each of these decisions is fraught with conflicts.”
Protestors decried Wimbledon’s move to fully electronic line calls. (Photo: Getty Images)
Hawk-Eye is not only the trailblazer but also the primary provider of these technologies, with its cameras and algorithms able to track balls within one-fifth of an inch. Rufus Hack, the CEO of Sony’s sports businesses, shares a basic rubric for considering officiating tech.
“You’re trying to trade off speed versus accuracy versus entertainment,” Hack said.
The interplay of those three priorities varies by sport and league. He noted, for example, that accuracy is particularly paramount in short-duration tournaments, such as the FIFA World Cup, but perhaps less critical in the early throes of, say, a 162-game baseball season.
The dynamics and culture of a sport need to be considered and rigorously tested, Hack said. “Its implementation needs to be handled incredibly sensitively, and it needs to be empathetic to the values of the game because obviously people are incredibly passionate about their sport.”
The rigidity of technology’s calls also begs the philosophical question: What actually should be called? Is strict adherence to the rules always best or should there be some contextual subjectivity, such as when a police officer has the discretion to decide how tightly to enforce a speed limit?
The goal — and it’s a hard one — is not to let technology change the framework of a sport. As former NFL officiating boss Dean Blandino, who now holds that position with the UFL, said, “It’s just creating that right balance between ‘let’s get it right in those big moments’ but ‘let’s not distort how we do things for the majority of the game.’”
In the multitrillion-dollar asset class of sports, with athletes earning nine-figure salaries to play games with billions at stake in bets and broadcasts, the integrity of the competition has never been more closely scrutinized.
“The stakes are just too high not to try to solve this.”
Jeremy Bloom, X Games
As X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom, a two-time Olympic skier and NFL kick returner, described the gravity from his own playing days, “It didn’t feel like a medal was on the line. It felt like my life was on the line.” He’s now also Founder and Executive Chairman of Owl AI, an officiating tech spinoff run by the former head of AI at Google.
“The stakes,” Bloom said, “are just too high not to try to solve this.”
Here’s how leagues and tech companies are developing solutions that balance accuracy, speed, entertainment and the futures of their sports.
Accuracy
Paul Hawkins is an enthusiastic sportsman who earned a PhD in artificial intelligence in 1999 before developing a computer vision tracking system as a broadcast enhancement for cricket and tennis. Within a few years of it populating TV screens, the sports world started noticing the disconnect between what officials called and what the technology showed.
A 2004 US Open quarterfinal match in which four clearly incorrect calls went against Serena Williams in her loss to Jennifer Capriati ignited interest in a better system; Hawk-Eye was in use by the USA Network for the match.
Tennis was the first sport to embrace automated officiating. (Photo: Getty Images)
“It became more and more apparent that the umpire essentially had the worst view out of everyone,” Hawkins recalled.
Hawk-Eye was used as an officiating tool for the first time a year later and, by 2006, was adopted at the US Open. At the outset of its first Grand Slam, USTA Tournament Director Jim Curley approached Hawkins and told him, “If I don’t see you over the next two weeks, you’ve done a great job.”
“You either can deliver what you’ve promised and worked very hard to do, or it can go horribly wrong,” Hawkins said.
“You can forgive or you can understand the human making a mistake and you can get over it,” he added, “but if a computer makes a mistake, that’s then suddenly a bigger controversy.”
Early adoption followed as a reactive step in response to a controversy — Williams’ Open loss in tennis, a disallowed Frank Lampard goal for England in the 2010 World Cup for soccer — but now leagues are making large investments even for incremental upgrades. The collective-bargaining agreement between MLB and its umpires signed in December 2024 codifies the league’s right to implement ABS.
“The real goal for us has always been in the high-leverage situations when it really matters, to have an outlet where you can get a bad call corrected.”
Rob Manfred, MLB Commissioner
Challenges in MLB spring training this year were overturned 52.2% of the time, up slightly from 50.6% during Class AAA games in 2024. With roughly four challenges per game, that translates to two overturned pitches. That might not seem like much, unless one of those calls is in the ninth inning of a tied game.
“We accepted, when we first went to the instant replay system, that you’re not going to get every call right — that’s an aspiration no matter how much you do,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “The real goal for us has always been in the high-leverage situations when it really matters, to have an outlet where you can get a bad call corrected.”
ABS can input any strike zone shape, but finding consensus on what that shape should be is trickier than expected for such a fundamental part of the game. The rulebook defines a 3D shape over home plate. The plane facing the pitcher is a rectangle, but what it’s actually called is an oval. What ABS is programmed to call isn’t the same as either.
“Those are three different zones,” Sword said, acknowledging that “the zone that we actually call is dynamic and a little bit different for each umpire, a little bit different depending on the count, a little bit different depending on the pitch type. One of the challenges that has consumed a lot of time with testing ABS has been finding a static zone that will be the same for all pitches that best replicates what’s now a living, breathing thing.”
For now, ABS will adhere to the rectangle outlined in the rulebook but only call it as a flat zone at the plate’s midpoint, specific to each player’s height.
And automation calls it without bias, no matter the sport or stakes.
“You get the consistency because the AI doesn’t care who the player is, it doesn’t care if the fans are going to get upset, it doesn’t care what the money line is on the game,” Owl AI CEO Josh Gwyther said.
Speed
Goal celebrations in soccer are notoriously elaborate affairs, rituals that engage the fans and provide a natural break in the action. For officials, it’s a chance to review whether the goal should be allowed.
Those celebrations last 54 seconds, on average, according to Genius Chief Product Officer Matt Fleckenstein. “If you can actually get to a decision on whether or not someone was offside on a goal before the celebration has completed and they’re lining back, you’ve now not interrupted the fan experience.”
Expediency often helps retain viewers’ interest. “It is conceivable that a really, really hard, really, really clutch close call could be compelling for two minutes of time, but where it gets bad is when you get something that feels pretty routine, and that takes a long time,” said Phil Orlins, ESPN Vice President of Production, Technology and Innovation. “There is a shelf life on how long it feels tolerable before it becomes tedious.”
There’s a clear direction of travel, according to Bill Squadron, an Elon assistant professor of sports management. He previously led Sportvision, which created the first-and-10 yellow line in football and the K-Zone for baseball.
“Technology is now being applied to this element of the game,” he said. “It’s just being done often in clunky ways, with replays and challenges that slow down the pace and take forever.”
FIFA first used goal-line technology at the 2014 men’s World Cup, VAR at the 2018 tournament and SAOT for the 2022 edition. Enhanced SAOT, which is mostly automated, debuted at the FIFA Club World Cup. (A recent FIFA project developed AI that correctly identified 82.5% of last-touch-out-of-bounds calls, a promising start that still needs considerable refinement.)
“We are implementing technology on the field of play not to remove people, but simply to support people,” said Pierluigi Collina, Chairman of the FIFA referees committee, noting rule interpretations “are not given to artificial intelligence.”
“If we can turn a 60-second review into three seconds, and it’s automatically visualized on the broadcast and in an arena, even better.”
Tom Ryan, NBA senior vice president
The Korean Baseball Organization added full ABS for the 2024 season in part to expedite pace of play, and MLB is mindful of not giving back its dramatic gains from the pitch clock. MLB’s ABS saw an average of 13.8 seconds per challenge during 2025 spring training trials.
The NFL’s switch to a virtual first-down measurement system is said to reduce measurement time from 75 seconds for the human-carried chains to 30 seconds for the technology. The league measures about 12 times per week — fewer than once per game — but it adds up to nine minutes of weekly savings.
“Even though there’s a limited number of the virtual measurements, we are planning for what the future could potentially be,” said Kimberly Fields, NFL Senior Vice President of Football Business and Innovation Strategy, adding that the league is “lots of steps” away from using tech to spot the football. (The UFL is investigating a hybrid solution: Bolt6 tracking cameras and Sportable ball sensors; spotting the ball remains the “holy grail of problems to solve in sports tech,” Bolt6 Chief Commercial Officer James Japhet said.)
The NBA is mindful of its end-of-game pace when the strategic benefit of fouls already slows the last two minutes of a game to about seven minutes of real time. Deliberations over which of the 100 extra-long fingers last grazed a basketball heading out of bounds are tricky.
That’s why the league piloted SportIQ to see if its ball sensor might help automate those decisions. Summer League trials were “very successful,” Ryan said, and will continue in the G League.
Game flow is “very much top of mind for everyone at the league office,” Ryan said. “If we can turn a 60-second review into three seconds, and it’s automatically visualized on the broadcast and in an arena, even better.”
Entertainment
The first public demonstration of ABS took place at the 2019 Atlantic League All-Star Game. The proceedings were remarkably unremarkable. The so-called robot umpire only made one visibly jarring call — a low third strike. The hitter started to argue, only for the umpire to point to his right ear-worn AirPod, signaling it was an ABS call, not his, thereby deflating the player’s budding fury.
“I would love to see John McEnroe play with the machines,” retired tennis star Maria Sharapova recently quipped at a Bloomberg event. “He’d still find a cause for argument.”
Such argumentative theatrics are entertaining to some, but disrespectful to others. And they get trumped by what really matters.
“We are in the storytelling and drama business,” ESPN’s Orlins said. “Historically, there are elements of debate and argument over calls that are interesting, but at its core, I think the fans demand the best possible accuracy and, from a broadcast standpoint, we want transparency for the viewers as best we can. We want speed and precision.”
“I would love to see John McEnroe play with the machines. He’d still find a cause for argument.”
Maria Sharapova, retired tennis star
Technology, meanwhile, can generate a different kind of engaging presentation. Tennis fans clap in unison at the sight of a replay, cheering or booing the result. What’s shown on the video board is a conclusive 3D recreation of the ball’s landing. Hawkins explained that a tennis ball can skid along the ground for 8-to-10 centimeters, which is why the animation shows an oval, not a circle. Any single video frame will inherently be incomplete, and it’s the triangulation among several cameras that compounds the accuracy.
“It is very difficult to get video that is definitive,” Hawkins said. “The computer has made the decision, and any presentation is just there to sell the decision the computers made.”
The NBA created a similar graphic for goaltending, which is decided by a series of three discrete events — whether the ball is descending, whether it is over the rim and whether it has touched the backboard — that can be visualized.
Engendering fan support requires some transparency in the process. “You don’t want a black box,” SMT’s Hall said. ”You want to make sure it’s formulaic and it’s algorithmic, and it’s repeatable and explainable as to why this outcome was arrived at.”
The NFL replaced the chain gang with virtual first-down measurements this year, saving time during the game. (Photo: Getty Images)
One of the models underpinning Owl AI’s officiating provides a written explanation for its scoring. An evaluation of snowboarder Yuto Totsuka on the halfpipe mentioned his rotations and vertical height, while also describing his “DARING and powerful approach, all while being exceptionally SMOOTH.”
“The really tricky part was teaching the model what good style was,” Bloom said. “There’s a lot of inputs, of course, but the predominant one is what we describe as good economy of motion.”
While artistic merit would seem subjective, Owl deconstructs components of each trick. That piecemeal approach helps the AI conjure a score even for brand-new tricks — complete with a script saying why.
“We can take the collective input of the actual athletes,” Gwyther noted. “So it’s almost like they’re being judged by their peers versus an individual that has a specific thought process.”
As Hawk-Eye first proliferated sports and met with officials, Hawkins recalled those as “fairly frosty initial meetings” that felt “very much ‘us versus them.’” In time, the contentious dynamic faded, and recently he said, “I think they do see us as all a part of the same team.”
Officials’ early fear of being shown up by technology has, in many cases, evolved into appreciation for the cover. Getting overturned can spare them public criticism.
“One of their biggest problems is the pipeline of referees,” Bloom said. “The people who want to be refs, these guys are getting death threats because there’s so much money in sports betting. Their families are getting harassed.”
Recruitment and retention of officials is already difficult. The National Federation of High Schools has described the shortage as having reached a “crisis level.” When Wimbledon eliminated its line judges, one researcher wondered if it might disincentivize those seeking to reach a Grand Slam.
“That’s no longer an option for those line judges,” said Tom Webb, a Coventry University associate professor and the founder of the Referee and Sports Official Research Network. “What does that mean in terms of enticing people into the sport, in terms of performance and development below that level?”
Technology is typically more aid than replacement. Removing objective calls from the workload of referees could help them focus more on subjective decisions.
While most hockey penalties are judgment calls, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said there’s a place for tech: “Something like offsides and high sticking, in terms of where the puck was touched — those are things that we may be able to do better with using, not just the Apple Watch or the Hawk-Eye system, but even using artificial intelligence in terms of recreating situations.”
Players are not permitted to lift their sticks above an opponent’s shoulder to strike the puck to a teammate. Tracking cameras can assess stick height, so the on-ice official only needs to see who gains possession.
Owl AI’s officiating models create commentary about the action, enabling rare transparency in sports judged by scoring. (Photo courtesy of Owl AI)
“You only have one decision to make instead of two,” said Stephen Walkom, NHL Executive Vice President of Officiating, earlier this year. “Anything that is seamless and serves the game is always best.”
While an enterprise system like Hawk-Eye’s can cost nearly $100,000 for a single tennis court, some products are leaner and more easily democratized. Owl AI runs entirely as a software layer applied to video. It used a single camera for the X Games halfpipe, with the algorithms correctly predicting first, second and third place.
The same concept could be applied to other judged sports. “The goal would be that you get that certified by an Olympic committee, and now all these nonprofessional events — like your kids’ gymnastics — can now have a professional judge behind just a webcam,” Gwyther said.
Tennis is rife with line-call issues at the lower levels, with “hooking” — i.e. deliberate cheating — so rampant it has been cited as the No. 1 reason young players quit. Now, systems such as PlaySight and the USTA-backed PlayReplay are providing results with light installations, while SwingVision operates using only iPhones.
Paul Hawkins, shown at the Australian Open in 2005, founded Hawk-Eye, a camera tracking tech provider for the MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, FIFA and tennis. (Photo: Getty Images)
SwingVision, financially backed by Tennis Australia, started calling lines at five USTA junior tournaments last summer. “There was one parent we talked to, and he said, ‘This is the first tournament where I was talking to the opponent’s parent, and we were just talking about life and we weren’t arguing about anything,’” CEO Swupnil Sahai said. “He was shocked. He’s like, ‘This is so transformational.’”
By and large, Squadron said, the reluctance to embrace more technology is less about its accuracy and more about people’s attachment to tradition.
“The human element is about the athletes, the unpredictability, the excitement about whether somebody can perform in an incredible, pressured situation,” he said. “Those unexpected errors that are so devastating — that is [part of] sports. The fact that an official doing his or her best misses a call and costs a team that’s trained, worked, performed for a championship? To me, that’s not part of the game.”
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
In this recent virtual Learning Series roundtable, Drs David Fletcher and Danielle Adams Norenberg explain why there is now more to the role than individual counselling.
An article brought to you in partnership with
“Just this last year I’ve had many more enquiries than I have had in the last 18 years around how my experience and background can help across the institution,” he said.
Once upon a time, it was primarily athletes who requested Fletcher’s time. Today it is just as likely to be a senior coach or performance director.
“Another space is the development of a multidisciplinary team,” he continued. “There’s also a demand for support getting people from technical expertise into leadership-type roles. The other space is working at board level around systems, structures and processes.”
Fletcher co-presented the second part of a Leaders Virtual Roundtable Learning series entitled ‘How Do we Enhance the Impact of Psychology in Performance Environments?’
For all that the role of psychology in performance is expanding, there are enduring challenges.
Wider perceptions for one. “Coaches haven’t necessarily been able to spend the time to truly understand what it is that sports psychology can do,” said Dr Danielle Adams Norenberg, the Head of Psychology at the UK Sports Institute, who joined Fletcher on hosting duties.
“We are still seeing some differences in who is hired, how they’re hired, what support they’re getting.”
Over the course of an hour, the duo set out those challenges before exploring the key role that performance psychologists can play in providing improved coach education and systemic-level support.
Common challenges in sports psychology
Coaches broadly accept the ‘80:20’ idea, which posits that 20 percent of performance is psychological (even if people quibble with the exact balance). Yet relatively few organisations provide the necessary service support.
To compound matters, the psychologists themselves are often at a disadvantage due to:
While these challenges persist, perceptions are shifting. The next part of the conversation focused on the ways a psychologist can support coach development and other system-level elements.
The performance psychologist’s role in coach development
“It’s hard to separate the technical and tactical from psychological, mental decisions coaches have to make,” said a performance manager from the New Zealand system.
Fletcher corroborated this observation. “Without doubt I’ve been doing much more work with coaches than one-to-one sessions with athletes,” he said. However, he finds coach education programmes to be “extremely hit and miss” both within national governing bodies and professional environments.
“A national governing body of sport might have a pretty solid coach education to go through your level one, level two, to get out in the field. But then when you’re working at Olympic level, what support is there?”
Fletcher and Adams Norenberg then outlined the two areas where psychologists can ensure more hits than misses:
A psychologist, as Fletcher explained, can help a coach to develop their “time management skills, body language, and communication skills” in the pursuit of better performance.
By the same token, psychologists have been instrumental in facilitating a shift from deficit-based to strengths-based coaching. Adams Norenberg said: “Even if planted within a very generic training session, athletes have the self-awareness, knowledge and autonomy to make the most out of their training session by focusing on developing their strengths.”
Psychology is another string in a coach’s bow. If they understand the types of pressures that athletes experience they can “choose a particular training session to not necessarily develop technique or tactical skills, but psychology skills.” She cited the example of the VR headsets used in training by Team Europe ahead of the 2025 Ryder Cup. Some players simulated the spectator abuse they would endure at Bethpage Black; others used it not for pressure training but relaxation, such as the Norwegian Viktor Hovland, who recreated the fjords of his homeland.
A performance psychologist can also help to ensure your actions match your words
Adams Norenberg refers to individual psychology work (in the absence of a wider remit) as little more than “icing the collapsing cake”.
It is unnecessarily limiting, as Fletcher illustrated using this common scenario. “If you’re hired as a sports psyche to do lots of athlete one-to-one work, the athlete leaves the room or steps off the track after a training session that’s been supported by a performance psychologist only for some organisational communication to come out that takes away all of that work.”
The solution lies in “working with our leaders to try and help them see that psychology can support them in the alignment of decisions to values and can help them communicate those decisions in ways that that land in a way with athletes that they see and value the support”.
Performance psychology v clinical psychology
There has been a trend towards pathologising psychological issues, which causes clinical psychologists to misunderstand the day to day work of performance counterparts.
With this issue in mind, Adams Norenberg recently hosted a forum for the clinical psychologists in the UKSI’s referral network outlining what performance psychologists do. “I have worked more with the network to try and build up a better relationship and understanding of what the sports psychologist’s roles and skillset is.”
What to read next
‘Sports Psychologists Cannot Just Sit and Wait for Work to Come in the Door’
The International Tennis Integrity Agency’s launch of its new secure messaging service has a range of anti-doping benefits for athletes such as Jannik Sinner and Iga Świątek.
Main Photo: Getty Images
Branded “The Line,” the service will allow players to send anonymous messages — ranging from questions about permissible medications to reporting concerns about potential rule breaches by other players — directly to ITIA officials on WhatsApp. It was developed in partnership with anonymous communication platform RealResponse, whose encryption services are used by pro sports properties including NASCAR, the Kansas City Chiefs and IC360.
“The key bit for us is making it as easy as possible for players and agents and coaches to contact us,” ITIA CEO Karen Moorhouse told SBJ. “They’re people who are on the road, they’re traveling internationally. They don’t want to be looking up an email address or finding a telephone number to call. WhatsApp is where they’re at.”
Previously, the ITIA primarily fielded integrity-related questions and concerns through web forms, email or phone calls. “There was an extra layer that was slightly more cumbersome,” Moorhouse said. “The challenge we set ourselves was, ‘How do we make it as simple as possible for a player to get in touch with us and get the information they need?’”
She added that the recent, high-profile suspensions of Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek for anti-doping violations the ITIA found to be unintentional underscored the importance of having a better communication system in place.
“Those cases really shone a spotlight on the tennis anti-doping program, how it’s possible to inadvertently breach the anti-doping rules, and led to a lot of conversations across tennis that perhaps hadn’t previously happened,” Moorhouse said. “It got players really thinking about what steps they needed to take to mitigate their own risk of potentially testing positive for a banned substance — and then, linked to that, the importance of them getting the right information and the right education. Absolutely, some of the things that flowed from those cases strengthened and highlighted the importance of us having a system like this.”
RealResponse CEO David Chadwick said his company’s system enables users to communicate through “commonly used channels” like WhatsApp, while ITIA officials will field messages through an administrative portal. Players will be able to choose whether to enter anonymous or non-anonymous communication channels within WhatsApp depending on the nature of their inquiry (if the latter is chosen, their contact info will be shared with the ITIA on the back end).
“It makes it easier for people to be able to communicate and break down barriers in a system they trust and are familiar with,” Chadwick said. “But secondly, it allows for two-way communication.
“Through our system, the ITIA will be able to respond back to the person to ask further questions, clarify things, gather evidence, point to resources — all the while that person remains anonymous [if they choose]. They’re not having to download an app, they’re not having to call a hotline, fill out a web form, it’s as simple as them sending something via WhatsApp.”
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
