The Aria Resort & Casino will host the CES Sports Zone this year, while exhibitors will set up shop at the Sands. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
The 2019 Consumer Electronics Show will feature the largest assortment of sports technology and fitness companies in CES history. With panels and exhibitors spread across several hotels, sports tech professionals looking to make the most of their experience should read on and begin to pencil together a schedule for the huge show that runs from Jan. 8 to 11.
This year’s show will offer 4,900 total square feet of exhibitor space at the CES Sports Zone, a dedicated two-day track focused exclusively on sports technology. This is in addition to separate exhibitors and panels focused on digital health and fitness.
The vast majority of the panels will take place at Aria Resort & Casino (primarily in the Primrose Ballroom). Panels will kickoff at 11 a.m. PT on Tuesday, Jan. 8, starting with a 30-minute research presentation from the Sports Innovation Lab that will cover sports tech trends spanning the quantified athlete and smart venues to fan engagement and esports.
Presentations will be held throughout the two-day Sports Zone track, including with former NFL players Dhani Jones and Isaiah Kacyvenski, who will discuss emerging business opportunities for athletes. An all-female panel featuring NBA Head of Marketing Partnerships Kerry Tatlock, IBM Sports & Entertainment Partnership Marketing Program Director Elizabeth O’Brien, and Spartan Race Chief Marketing Officer Carola Jain will discuss the importance of partnerships to drive fan engagement.
The track’s first day will end with a discussion on the connected athlete that will feature Colette Lucas-Conwell, a coxswain for the U.S. men’s rowing team, and another on smart venues moderated by SportTechie CEO Taylor Bloom.
Sports Zone’s second day will kickoff in the same place at 9:45 am with another research presentation from Sports Innovation Lab, featuring Damani Leech, the NFL’s senior vice president of football strategy and business development. That will be followed with a panel discussion on immersive media that will include representatives from the NFL, Intel, and NextVR. Two esports professionals—Daniel Cherry, the chief marketing officer to Activision Blizzard Esports League, and Kristen Salvatore, Twitch’s commercial director of esports—will chat about the forces driving esports’ explosive growth.
Near the end of day two, Turner President David Levy will give a speech on “the next era of sports media,” teeing up the stage for Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who will participate in a keynote panel discussing their content partnership and the league’s approach to tech.
Meanwhile, seven miles down the road at the Sands Expo Convention Center (Level 2, Halls A-D), sports tech exhibitors will have booths set up throughout the week. There are roughly 150 exhibitors slotted under the title of “sports technology and esports exhibitors,” including Sense Arena, which will offer attendees access to its virtual reality hockey training simulator. Other exhibitors run the gamut of tracking data to wearables and mobile apps, including VR-based eye-tracking platform SyncThink, which has been used as a training tool by the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks.
For those looking to expand beyond the designated sports panels and exhibitors, attendees can find hundreds of additional talks and booths focused on digital health, wearables, rugged cameras, drones, fitness, and mixed realities at both the Sands and the Las Vegas Convention Center. In fact, those hoping to find the next key technologies that will impact the world of sports would probably find significant value from scouting out emerging innovations that aren’t yet explicitly viewed as sports tech.
Intel which has been expanding its presence in sports over the past two years, will have a large interactive booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center at Tech East. Spread across the LVCC, the Sands and The Venetian, CES will host a digital health track that will center on innovation solutions for diagnosing, monitoring and treating illnesses, as well as advancements in health care delivery and smart lifestyles. Nearby, fitness and wearables companies will exhibit and discuss the latest developments in digital fitness, from tracking devices to smart fabrics. Fitbit will participate in this track with a large booth in the Venetian Ballroom.
This content is part of the CES Sports Zone Innovation Showcase. If your sports technology will impact the world of professional athletes, sports leagues, owners, coaching staff, and fans, you can’t afford to miss CES Sports Zone. Learn more here.
