This year's World Cup will be the first when "goal-line technology" will
be used, years after the concept was introduced to sports such as
cricket, rugby and tennis, according to Harro Ten Wolde of REUTERS. GoalControl, which costs €100,000-€170,000 ($136,000-$231,200) a year, "makes use of 14 cameras." They "send digitalized pictures to a data room," sitting in the top of the football stadium. After analyzing the data, the message will be sent to a special watch, worn by the referee with the word "GOAL" if the ball is over the line. The process "takes less than a second." GoalControl Managing Dir and co-Founder Dirk Broichhausen said, "Clearly, the world cup is very important to us. We hope to convince some skeptics about the technology." At the moment the company makes less than €10M ($14M) in annual revenues. But it estimates it is tapping into a market of about €100M ($136M). Broichhausen said at the Tivoli football stadium, which has the system installed, "The game is changing rapidly and we are looking at other sports which can use our technology" (REUTERS, 5/28).
