Cracking the sports code

Getting in the game: opportunities for resellers

Most IT and AV companies have global alliances with major sports events and teams, such as Sony with the World Cup, Dell with maxi yacht YuuZoo, IBM with the Australian Open and so on. 

In these cases, resellers might enquire how they can profit from this involvement?

Closer to home, the increasing use of audiovisual gear in clubrooms, players' homes and the coaching box opens an avenue for resellers to sell flat-screen TVs, DVD players media centres, networks and management.

Some are finding opportunities supporting sports stars with their telecommunications needs especially when they travel outside the country for months on tour.

Systems that marry data and video are the way of the future and so high-definition cameras will become more important.

Ruggedised notebooks that coaches can take on the field and players throw in their kit bags alongside the boots and sweats may also become more attractive as sports data insinuates itself into match preparation.

PDAs and smartphones such as the iPhone will also become favoured for catching up on match debriefs. Suppliers of sports data software are talking about having such applications ready to go presently.

And networking, especially 802.11n, is becoming more important to reticulate data and video at venues and in coaches' and players' homes and club houses.