RFID Is a Winner in the Sports Arena

RFID promises to be a big-league player in just about every aspect of every sport.

By John Edwards

Timing is everything in sports—and not only on the track or playing field. Fans need to gain entry to their seats quickly and efficiently, and concession operators have to move their goods at a rapid pace. Most important, sports organizers and officials need to time competitors precisely and track split-second plays in events as diverse as NASCAR races, horse races and marathons.

Over the past several years, RFID has become an integral part of a growing number of sports and sports-related activities. RFID is even being incorporated into sports equipment to help golfers find their balls and memorabilia collectors authenticate their prized objects. RFID is rapidly rising through the wide world of sports to become a major-league player, says Dan Mullen, president of AIM Global, a Warrendale, Pa.-based trade association representing automatic-identification solution providers. "The surface is just being scratched," he says. "The technology is well suited to support a number of different sports."

Play Ball

As RFID tags get smaller and cheaper, many observers expect an explosion in sports applications. The day may not be far off when RFID becomes an integral part of virtually all sports gear—shoes, gloves, bats, skis and ski poles, golf clubs, goalposts, nets, bases and more—allowing officials to make unerring calls, and players and fans to receive a steady, virtually unending stream of performance information. "We're talking about an entirely new ball game," says AIM Global's Mullen.

Par for the Course

If time is one of the reasons fewer people in the United States are playing golf these days, RadarGolf could help get the game back on course. Radar Corp., based in San Ramon, Calif., has devised a way to build RFID tags into golf balls to make them easier to find. "It's kind of funny to have grown men wandering back and forth looking for a little white ball," says Chris Savarese, Radar Corp.'s founder and president. The RadarGolf system differs from most other RFID systems in that the technology's goal is to help users find a lost object rather than to track something like a shipping case or pallet. A dual-frequency (915/1,830 MHz) passive tag is embedded in the ball, and a handheld reader gives the golfer aural and visual feedback, via an audio tone and LCD, as he or she approaches a missing ball.

The golf ball meets all United States Golf Association specifications for size, weight, distance, initial velocity and symmetry, Savarese says. The trickiest part of the development, he notes, was devising a ball that could be repeatedly whacked without losing its shape, flight characteristics, physical integrity or RFID functionality. To achieve this goal, as well as to simplify production, the ball is tagged snuggly in its core at the time of manufacture. "It tests well against all the balls in the market that don't have a tag in them," Savarese says.

These days, Savarese is spending his time trying to get the attention of the sport's top manufacturers, including Callaway, Nike and Titleist. "We've always had plans to license the technology to a big, established brand," he says. A next-generation RadarGolf ball, currently in the works, will feature a wider detection range and a smaller handheld reader. It will also be marketed under a well-known golf ball brand, Savarese says. For now, RadarGolf is available on the company's Web site. A starter kit, consisting of a dozen balls, a handheld reader, a carrying case and accessories, is priced at $199.95.