Digital Sport’s Weekly Wash-Up 03/06/16

June 3, 2016 Toby Marriott

Dallas Cowboys use high-tech footballs for training

The Dallas Cowboys are now using footballs that whistle when a player holds a ball tightly and with correct form, in a plan to reduce fumbles during games. The NFL side is one of five to be using High and Tight Training Balls, with the San Diego Chargers, the Baltimore Ravens and the Indianapolis Colt also investing in the product.

This isn’t the first time the Cowboys have engaged with cutting-edge digital innovation. The team has also started using drones and virtual reality for training, and recently unveiled an ‘NFL Draft War Room‘ which gives fans unprecedented access to player comparison tools, highlights and stats.

Manchester City set to trial stadium selfie app

Next season Manchester City will run trials for a new in-stadium mobile app called Snaptivity, which will allow fans to focus stadium cameras on themselves and friends to create an ‘event triggered extended selfie’, for downloading, tagging and sharing across social media.

The partnership with Snaptivity is the latest move from Man City to experiment with new technologies, including wearable technology for fans. Snaptivity has also partnered with Edgbaston – home of the Birmingham Bears – to provide the same technology for their T20 Blast matches.

Visa to use Olympic athletes to test new ‘payment ring’ in Rio

Visa will be the only card accepted at official venues of this summer’s Olympic games in Rio this August. But the company doesn’t just want exclusive access to the wallets of hundreds of thousands of tourists, they are using the event to introduce a new ring that will let people pay with a wave of their hand: No phone, wallet or even battery needed.

The NFC-enabled payment ring is a prototype at this point and won’t be available to the general public in time for Rio. Instead, the Olympic Village will be a testing ground to find out how well it performs in the field.

Steph Curry gets his own emojis, tops sales list

If receiving consecutive MVP awards followed by the potential of consecutive Championship rings wasn’t enough, Golden State Warriors superstar Steph Curry has received his own emojis app.

What’s more is that after two days of release, the app has topped the most paid list, usurping that of Kim Kardashian.

With the app allowing purchasers to send Curry-like emojis to each other via messaging, it arrived just in time for the start of the NBA Finals which kicked off on Thursday 2 June between Curry’s Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Steph Curry emoji app now top paid app in store, passes Kim Kardashian emoji app pic.twitter.com/HIappKuSBI

— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) June 2, 2016