LIVE FROM CTIA SUPER MOBILITY WEEK: A morning roundtable heard how new thinking in US sports, influenced by the take-up of mobile devices, could, quite literally, see the shirt sold off an athlete’s back.

All speakers agreed much has changed over the past decade in the relationship between the mobile industry and professional sport, both from the performers’ point of view but also that of fans.

Simon Wardle, chief strategy officer of Octagon, a sports marketing and research firm, looked back to a 2004 alliance between US operator Nextel and Nascar. “It was a little bit of false fit,” he said.

Now however, he continued: “We are in the world of the smartphone and they are fan command central. We can stream video, surf the web, look at apps. This has redefined the sports fan experience.”.

Indicative of the change is how Nascar’s thinking has moved on.

Colin Smith, managing director of Nascar Digital Media, said from next year all drivers will be fitted with tracking technology.

He related a recent incident when leading driver Jimmie Johnson was badly dyhydrated and had to be pulled out of car at the end of a race. In Johnson’s situation, tracking would have had an obvious health monitoring role, but Smith sees more to it:

“Fans have an unbelievable connection with drivers. They want to know everything about them. If they can know Jimmie Johnson’s heart rate at turn four in Daytona, they want to know that information, so we can actually make a consumer app out of that.”

Even more imaginative thinking was on offer from Emmitt Smith (pictured), a former US football star and founder of Prova, a firm which authenticates sports memorabilia.

He gave an example of inserting a smart tag inside a football to track its progress on the pitch. If the ball is subsequently bought a potential buyer can scan the ball with their smartphone and verify its authenticity.

“If you are going to pay $1,400 for a ball, you want to know it’s real.”

He gives another example; “NFL is starting to put sensors in guy’s shoulder pads to monitor where they are on the pitch.” That technology could reach mobile phones so a fan can see movement of a player on the field.

Smith pushes the concept further so that fans tracking a player can participate in an auction via their mobile devices of a player’s shirt, helmet or shoes, all particularly desirable after a memorable game.

Finally, the data generated during games is not just changing the fans’ perspective but that of the media who cover a sport, according to John Kosner, ESPN’s EVP of digital & print media:  “In our case, there is a whole genre of content created around the analytics sensors, it’s data journalism, which is a whole new field.”