SXsports: Are You Ready for Your Future?

This essay was written for the Makers of Sport® newsletter in March 2016. Monday Musings and Weekend Reads were the written editions of the newsletter that accompanied the podcast; the archived email is on Mailchimp. The newsletter's links and announcements are trimmed here.

Those of you that follow myself or the podcast on Twitter know that I recently spent time in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest (SXSW), the 30-year old tech, film and music festival that has been vital in predicting trends in technology and even responsible for launching some of our most-used tech products.

This was my second time attending SXSW as I attended back in 2010. I went to Austin more specifically this time to target sports-related panels at SXsports, the convergence track in its third year.

Head of SXsports, Rebecca Feferman, joined the podcast on Episode 56.

The conference is full of many useful events—between great panels on multiple topics, to environmental experiences by brands, to private parties (I was invited to a private house party by renown VC firm Andreessen Horowitz at an Airbnb but that is a story for another time), concerts, branded parties and meet-ups. It's very tough to choose what you wanted to see because there is so much available and it can be quite overwhelming. My first time to SXSW, I tried to do entirely too much. This year, I went to Austin with a mission to attend anything that had to do with building brands in sports and the future of our industry.

Many listeners of this podcast are either marketers for teams, working in-house for teams as designers or wanting to work for teams. It's easy to get tied up into the business of the day-to-day. This may be why the sports industry is renown for not innovating quickly and adapting to new technology. People just don't have the amount of hours in a day. Just ask your co-worker what AR stands for. If they Arkansas, chances are they a tech dinosaur (speaking of, I got a sweet pic with Arkansas Football Head Coach Bret Bielema who happened to be on a panel about using virtual reality in football).

Luckily for you, I'm here to give you a few quick hitters of what you should be preparing for in order to create in the immediate future of sports.

Virtual Reality (or VR for n00bs): VR was *everywhere* at SXSW this year. From branded experiences by IBM to a random Dayton, Ohio (yea, I said that) tech startup that merges humans with machines through user experiences. VR touched just about every aspect of the conference—from film, to music, to interactive, to sports. As mentioned, Bret Bielema of the University of Arkansas discussed how his mind has been changed regarding VR as he once considered it a glorified gaming experience. Now he views it as a complete game changer in preparing game-ready football players.

The Internet of Things (IoT): Pretty soon your refrigerator will send notices to Amazon or to your online grocery store of preference and let you them know when you're out of milk and eggs. Data and connected devices were the rage. With things like the Apple Watch, FitBit, Jawbone and other fitness trackers prevalent, there were plenty of talks on how to utilize and aggregate the data over the Internet and our smart phones to provide better user experiences across multiple digital and physical platforms. I attended a panel with Droga5's head of strategy and Under Armour Chief Digital Officer (and founder of MapMyFitness) Robin Thurston discussing Under Armour's new Healthbox and their heavy focus on digital. Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, one of the keynotes, further reemphasized the brand's goal to put a large focus on technology and connected fitness. He even took a jab the failure of the NIke+ Fuelband and mentioned innovation is more than "a synthetic upper" on sneakers.

Snapchat: You've heard about it, yes. Maybe you use it. Or, maybe you are confused by the UI, but there is no secret you need to start learning how to use it. I've been an avid user for a year now and have mentioned D.J. Khaled's Snapchat adventures. Realtime video and smaller clips are how the next generation consumes their media. Even in stadiums (unfortunately I missed a panel called "The Death of Stadiums"), teams and brands need to focus on providing experiences that complement what is happening on the floor or field with mobile. Despite Mark Cuban's subjective opinion on wanting people's eyes on his product on the court, his belief is just not realistic. Complement, don't compete with mobile.

Athletes Are Brands: Athletes and media personalities are really beginning to embrace and understand that they are brands. I listened to Vernon Davis discuss giving up part of his hard-earned NFL income to investors as a part of Fantex, as well as discuss investing in multiple franchises and brands. He even mentioned that he turned down a lucrative deal with a well-known burger & fries company because it just isn't true to his brand as a health-conscious professional athlete.

In addition, I attended a great panel moderated by Fox Sports' Katie Nolan on whether athletes need to be good people. It got very heated as it included a writer from TMZ Sports and Johnny Manziel's former agent. It was easily one of the most enjoyable panels I attended purely from an entertainment perspective. The passionate debate just further proved that athletes paying attention to their digital personas is extremely important from both a career and a brand partnership perspective.

Of course there were many more events and panels discussing other areas of tech, but these few areas seemed to be the biggest takeaways and the general talk of most off-the-cuff conversations I was having at the NBC Sports Lawn.

If you are interested in hearing some of the panels, lucky for you (and me in regards to the ones I skipped out on for breakfast tacos), SXSW puts all of them up on their Soundcloud page. But, be prepared to spend a ton of time here combing through panels on music, film, social media, and more.

Have a great week, y'all.

Cheers,

Adam