Wimbledon, World Cup and more: How sports technology can benefit businesses

"A key challenge is needing to establish multi-location enterprise solutions across approximately 40 venues within quite a compressed window," says Brian Nourse, CIO of Glasgow 2014.

"The last six to eight weeks before the opening ceremony is when the pressure will be at its highest. It's when our teams will be deploying the physical equipment into the venues all at the same time. It is a logistics challenge which requires significant coordination and organisation to get the right everything to happen in the right sequence across all of the venues," he said.

The system opens a lot of possibilities for analytics and entertainment solutions in football and beyond. The possibilities of applications are endless: real time measurement and 3D-animation in athletics, horse tracking in equestrian sports and also non-sports where accuracy of position is a prerequisite.

Many multiple-office businesses can identify with these challenges and although the Commonwealth Games only take place for 10 days, communication between the venues is just as vital as it is between office locations, ensuring those watching and participating in the event experience undisturbed coverage.

Object monitoring systems

If you've been watching the World Cup in Brazil, you'll probably be quite familiar with goal line technology.

German company GoalControl GmbH was selected as part of a tender process after FIFA invited all four FIFA-licenced goal line technology providers to submit a proposal for the tournament.

GoalControl-4D was installed across all 12 stadiums, each one with 14 high-speed cameras (seven per goal) around the pitch, mounted on the stadium roof or catwalk. The cameras are connected to an image processing computer system that tracks the movement of objects on the pitch and filters out the players and referees.

The remaining object is the ball and the system knows its three dimensional position within a few millimetres. When the ball passes the goal line, the system sends a vibration and optical signal to the officials watches.

"The system opens a lot of possibilities for analytics and entertainment solutions in football and beyond," explains Rolf Dittrich, a GoalControl spokesperson. "The possibilities of applications are endless: real time measurement and 3D-animation in athletics, horse tracking in equestrian sports and also non-sports where accuracy of position is a prerequisite."

Clare Hopping
Freelance writer

Clare is the founder of Blue Cactus Digital, a digital marketing company that helps ethical and sustainability-focused businesses grow their customer base.

Prior to becoming a marketer, Clare was a journalist, working at a range of mobile device-focused outlets including Know Your Mobile before moving into freelance life.

As a freelance writer, she drew on her expertise in mobility to write features and guides for ITPro, as well as regularly writing news stories on a wide range of topics.