This is the future of watching sport

WANT to find out how Steve Smith’s first few tests leading his team compares to other Aussie captains? You’ll soon be able to — without looking away from your TV.

This is the future of watching sport

GONE are the days of sitting back to watch your favourite sport on the couch, waiting for commentators to tell you more about your favourite player.

We’ve now obsessed with our phones, and our need for constant information means we’re looking up obscure stats while we sit back and watch. While this means we can look up Shane Warne’s bowling efforts against India in 1992 (rubbish, by the way) ... we might miss something that’s going on right now.

Korean tech giant Samsung is looking to change that.

They’re working with major sports (including codes popular in Australia) and broadcasters to push Samsung Sports Live.

While the product is already available for some sports internationally, the technology was featured at CES, showing how viewers can interact with their TV during live sport to access stats we’re interested in.

Samsung Australia’s AV director Brad Wright told news.com.au that they will be bringing this feature this year to our nation’s biggest sports.

“We’re in negotiating with broadcasters to bring Sports Live to Australia’s most popular sports like rugby league, AFL, Cricket and Rugby union,” he said.

It won’t leave you stumped.

This means that while you are watching Steve Smith hit his latest century, you can scroll through the same screen to potentially see stats like how he compares to different Aussie captains, his career average and even things like his average at the ground he is playing on.

This is just one feature that TV makers and broadcasters are bringing in to make sport more television centric, keeping eyeballs on the screen and making more money. Others features like hawkeye and extreme slow mo at the cricket, or Vizrt at the football that allow presenters to interact digitally with the footage are all bits of technology used to make watching sport on TV more entertaining and engaging than ever.

You just have to look at the Big Bash League, a competition that was designed around how it would be broadcast on TV.

There are even breaks between overs that are extended specifically to allow the broadcaster to play more ads. NRL and AFL do similar things, like when a goal or try is scored, waiting for the ad break to finish before starting the game again.

Ready, set, play!

Due to new internet connected smart TVs allowing apps like Samsung’s Sports Live, we will see an increasing number of ways that viewers can be engaged with and interact with sports broadcasting as many sports become increasingly focused on their TV audience. The technology revolution in TV sport is only just beginning.

Originally published as This is the future of watching sport