Q&A: Hank Adams, CEO, Sportvision - July 2007  

This month, S&T talks to Hank Adams, CEO of US-based programming enhancement company Sportvision. Adams assumed the role in 2002 and is responsible for overseeing the strategic direction of the company, including new business and product development, strategic partnerships, and sales and marketing initiatives.

What are the main products/services that Sportvision offers clients?

“Sportvision partners with leagues and media entities to create original TV and new media content for wireless, online and gaming platforms. Sportvision has a comprehensive product suite as the definitive leader in providing live enhancements and applications for sports programming. A winner of eight Emmy Awards for technical achievement, the company has revolutionised the way sports are broadcast by delivering iconic innovations such as the Yellow 1st & Ten Line for [American] football, KZone virtual strike zone for baseball, and RACEf/x for motorsports, and more, allowing viewers to experience elements of a sport like never before.”
 
What achievement are you most proud of at Sportvision?

“I am very proud of Sportvision’s RaceView product, which is the first-ever live 3D rendition of a motorsports race. It has developed into a robust business that provides great entertainment value to fans, allowing them to follow their favorite driver through realtime, video game quality graphics, even when the driver is not on-screen. It is the culmination of a very complex motorsports tracking system and league and media rights deals that have been a long time in the making. It also lays out the blueprint for how new media can complement, improve and ultimately grow the audience for TV broadcasts. Subscribers to RaceView on NASCAR.com are more engaged and watch the TV broadcasts three times longer, on average, than non-subscribers.”

What are Sportvision's main challenges in the industry?

“Balancing innovation and execution. There is little room for mistakes in live TV or live online coverage of a sporting event. Innovation is the lifeblood of our company as we are in the business to ‘change the game’, but we also have to be incredibly reliable for our partners from a real-time execution standpoint. I believe we have significantly improved the experience for fans in a number of sports, which is an exciting place to be, but not always a safe place. It’s always a balancing act.”

How receptive have TV audiences been to your on-screen innovations?

“It varies. We have internal guidelines to assess each potential product. Our technology should illustrate something that happens a lot, is hard to see and is important to the game. Our most successful effects meet these criteria and have become part of the fabric of sports coverage. This is certainly the case with our motor sports, American football, and baseball products. Surveyed fan approval on the Yellow 1st & Ten Line, for instance, is close to 100%. We have had other products, however, which were not so successful, such as measuring home run distances. It turns out that the hit counts as a run regardless of how far it travels. The product flopped.”

What are your company's aspirations globally?

“Sportvision’s top goal in the coming 18 months is to bring our products to international markets. We are very proud of our role in pioneering the business of live sports enhancements. The world’s most popular sports, however, have a smaller presence in the US and we have not given them the focus they deserve. That is changing now. Our intention is to penetrate football (soccer), Formula One and cricket. We have deployed successful products in Major League Soccer (MLS), the top soccer league in the US, and we are confident these products will be valuable in the overseas markets. Likewise, our work in IRL, NASCAR and MLB leads us to believe that we have something unique and valuable to add to the coverage of Formula One, MotoGP, cricket and other sports.”

If you had a wish-list for new clients, who would be on it and why?

“Formula One, English Premiere League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, UEFA, ICC, MotoGP, etc., for reasons stated previously.”

How do you think technology has improved sport?

“The best way to answer this is through examples. Many casual fans of American Football tell me that our 1st & Ten Line product has helped them understand the sport better. Better understanding leads to more enjoyment, new fans and higher ratings which is good for everyone. Similarly, our K-Zone product in baseball helps announcers explain the nuances of the battle between pitcher and batter that is at the heart of baseball. I learn something new every time I watch an ESPN broadcast with Joe Morgan using our K-Zone product. Our new PITCHf/x product in baseball goes even further by tracking the flight of a pitch from the time it leaves the pitcher’s hand to the time it crosses home plate. This compelling data provides new statistics, such as ball ‘break’, never seen before in baseball. That system is being installed in every stadium to track every pitch thrown in the sport. The information has the potential to be transformative to understanding the sport for athletes, teams, media partners and fans alike. Motorsports is the area where we’ve had the biggest impact. Our RACEf/x product is used extensively (over 100 times per race) in the broadcasts to provide context and highlight action. It also powers mobile, internet, PPV and at-track content. With the launch of RaceView, fans can follow their driver at all times and from views impossible to achieve on TV; while that driver is seen on the TV screen for a fraction of the time. The teams are even using this application live now. Recently a crew chief was ill and hospitalised during a race, but continued to be involved in car strategy by having our application running in the hospital during the race.”

What technological changes have had the most affect on your business over the last few years?

“The internet and Moore’s Law. The internet because we have grown a significant business providing enhanced sports coverage online, including RaceView and RaceCast, a similar product for IndyCar, to a live 3D baseball ‘cast’ product called GameDay. Fans are logging in at surprising levels to see action they can’t get on television or to customise their experience. Moore’s Law is not a technology per se, but its impact on computing power has had a significant influence on our business. It used to require five racks of equipment and three specially trained operators to run our 1st &Ten system. It now takes a single rack of equipment and one trained operator. That has made our business much more economical and able to reach beyond the premium games.”

Do you think technology can ever take the place of umpires or referees?

“Umpires and referees will always be a part of the game, in my opinion. Technology can supplement and improve their accuracy, but there’s simply no substitute for human judgment.”

What's next for your company and the industry in general in your opinion?

“Sportvision has grown by repositioning itself as a content company. Sportvision’s goal is to collect a ‘Digital Record’ of sporting events, which I define as the realtime location and orientation of cars, players, balls and pucks. The company has developed a strong portfolio of patented and proprietary data capture and object tracking technologies to collect this digital record. The information allows for the creation of new forms of content such as live 3D renditions of action, video games where fans can interact live with the race (race your car in the live Formula One race, for instance) and new fantasy products. Sportvision’s long-term deals with various leagues is an outgrowth of our unique capabilities to collect this data and create content based on it. These advances are set against the backdrop where other technological changes are going to accelerate and increase the disruption in the media business. Everything from IPTV set top devices, fast and powerful cell phones, DVRs, internet-enabled video game boxes, etc., will continue to create new disruptions – and new ways to opportunities and entertain fans with a new set of products. It’s a great time to be in this business.”

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