This week, the 2018 Sports Technology Awards launched, to celebrate innovations in technology in sport over the past year.

This year, in addition to the normal categories, there are also new additions to reflect the changing nature of the industry, such as agency of the year and a new category for equipment and apparel.

In terms of digital, there are plenty of other categories for people to get involved with, and plenty that we’ve seen a lot of competition in over the last year or so.

The likes of “Best Broadcast Innovation” and “Most Innovative Fan Engagement Campaign” will surely have lots of entries and even worthy winners missing out, whilst “Best Integrated Digital Media” and “Best Technology for Fan Engagement” are areas where the rise of VR, AR, live-streaming and podcasting will add a real depth to competition.

It’s not just about awards, though, the event is about bringing people within the industry together and celebrating the tech-led innovations, too. There will be a talk, on the back of the success of last year’s innovations in stadium technology lecture, and this year’s will feature “an afternoon of insight – and not from the sources you might expect.”

But on top of this there will also be a tech hub, free for all organisations entering the awards, which will be an important resource for people searching for a specific technology, and a chance to stay in contact throughout the year as the awards organisers share industry insights and news to those who opt into the mailing list.

Rebecca Hopkins, the Sports Technology Awards’ CEO, explained ‘We held an inaugural TechTalk at last year’s ceremony; John Rhodes, leading sports architect from HOK, delivered an address on ‘The Stadium of the Future’ which was hugely successful. Our guests, who are largely very senior figures in sport, feedback that more of this insight would be very welcome – hence our introducing this as a more robust proposition. We all go to industry events that are very similar, with TechTalks, we are setting out to break the mould.’