We are in the early innings of what promises to be the greatest chapter in recorded history of sport. From streaming games live on every screen imaginable and 1-on-1 player and fan encounters through social media to advanced metrics that make teams and fans alike smarter and performance-optimizing wearable technology that helps athletes reach previously unattainable levels, not to mention tectonic cultural shifts creating a more inclusive and diverse sporting community, we are witnessing innovation and disruption that promise to usher in a new golden age for sport. In 'The New Golden Age of Sport,' we’ll look at some of the most disruptive technological and cultural innovations at work today and discuss what the future holds for the athlete (professional and amateur), owner, league, sports marketer and most importantly, the fans.

1. The New Golden Age of Sport
A SXSports 2015 Panel Discussion
With Jemele Hill (ESPN), Ricky Engelberg (Nike) & Richard Ting (R/GA)
Moderated by Kyle Bunch (Blogs with Balls)

2. If you’ve read, watched or listened to
media coverage of sport lately, chances
are that you’ve seen a lot of this...

5. SOURCE: Deadspin

8. Every day seems to bring a new example
of sport struggling to keep pace with the
rate of change in culture and business.

9. As often happens with industries in
disruption, critics are distracting us
from the real transformation story.

10. SOURCE: The Postgame (Yahoo! Sports)

12. SOURCE: Boston Globe

13. SOURCE: SB Nation

15. Moneyball 2.0: The New, Team-Oriented Study of Baseball
Instead of focusing on single players' stats, managers are increasingly trying to analyze the dynamics of entire franchises, a shift that is already helping MLB teams win.
HAYDEN HIGGINS - MAY 15 2014, 8:15 AM ET
Baseball is a team sport, but it sure gets lonely at times.
The pitcher stands at the center, for example, spitting and pacing before thousands. The infield stays lively, but there’s stoicism in the faces
of outfielders whose involvement in the game is either nil or total. When a fly ball isn’t plummeting towards the outfielder’s glove, he simply
waits. Basketball has the free throw, and football the field goal, but no other team sport is so composed of discrete events whose outcome
is solely on the shoulders of individual players. In baseball, if the ball’s on its way, it’s up to you (and no one else) to do with it what you will.
Perhaps because baseball is made up of separable, individual-centric events, that’s the direction researchers went when, decades ago,
they started thinking analytically about baseball. They sought to figure out how good a player was by isolating his performance, inching
toward a single measurement quantifying a player’s contribution to his team.
Today, that metric exists. Wins Above Replacement, or WAR, is the culmination of the first wave of “sabermetrics,” the study of why teams
win and lose baseball games—mature fruit of an idea first planted by Bill James in 1977 and watered, tended, and pruned by statisticians
and analysts like Mike Gimbel (in 1990), Keith Woolner (1995), and Voros McCracken (2001). It’s a fairly intuitive concept: Take all the runs
a player contributes at the plate, on the basepaths, and in the field, then calculate the additional games a team would win should they have
this player rather than a scrub from AAA. It’s what the Society for American Baseball Research (or SABR) probably always dreamed about:
a single metric that communicates, in one glance, a rough understanding of the value a player added to his team.
However, the smartest teams aren’t stopping there. Instead, they are changing their analysis to look at the team as a whole. How is player
performance impacted by environment—by teammates, by ballpark, by managers? If the first wave of sabermetrics was largely about
finding a holistic metric for comparing players, the next wave might be about figuring out how best to fit those players together as a
response to a given situation. The key question from Moneyball 1.0 was: Who is the better player? The key questions from Moneyball 2.0
are: Who is the right player? And what is the best way to deploy him?
SOURCE: The Atlantic

17. At the Wearable Futures conference, London designer and
researcher Shamees Aden debuted a running shoe concept that will
put your worn out kicks to shame. The shoes, which he's developing
with University of Southern Denmark professor Martin Hanczyc, are
3D printed from a synthetic biological material that can repair itself
overnight.
The running shoes are the product of Aden's study of protocells. The
basic protocell molecules are not themselves alive, but can be
combined to create living organisms. Mixing different protocells
creates different properties, and allows them to be programmed to
behave differently depending on heat, light, and pressure. The
shoes' unique construction allows them to be 3D printed to the exact
size of the user's foot, so they would fit like a second skin. While
running, the shoes would react to pressure and movement,
providing extra cushioning when needed.
SOURCE: The Verge

18. LAS VEGAS — Professional athletes will frequently do almost anything if
they believe it will help them improve. That explained why Billy Knight, an
overseas basketball player, was home one summer honing his jumper in a
Manhattan Beach, Calif., gym with Natalie Nakase.
When another player — an acquaintance of Knight’s — walked in, he was
incredulous. “What are you going to learn from her?” the player asked.
Knight said Nakase was a better shooter. He said she could prove it unless
the other player was scared. That was enough to set the mark.
It went like this several times when Nakase and Knight, college
acquaintances, worked out together: a wisecrack followed by a shooting
contest. Nakase rarely talked, but sharks were not supposed to look like her:
5-foot-2, ponytailed and disarming — at least until she unleashed her jump
shot.
As they moved around the 3-point line, keeping track of shots made, the
player who did this for a living swallowed harder. When the contest ended,
he handed over $20, and a bit of his pride.
SOURCE: New York Times

19. Join us at SXsports 2015, as we discuss
disruptive developments in sport today
and what they mean for the athletes,
businesses and fans of tomorrow.