April 10 – Chelsea have signed a new global partnership with Vietnamese technology giant FPT Corporation, aiming to accelerate the club’s digital transformation and expand their global reach.
November 7 – FIFA has teamed up with Hawk-Eye Innovations to establish the Football Technology Centre AG, a joint venture aimed at advancing tech solutions in football, particularly through the development of algorithms that automate in-game event detection.
September 30 – Italian sports technology company Soccerment has been selected to join Major League Soccer’s (MLS) Innovation Lab, as part of the second cohort of the league’s new tech business development initiative.
September 27 – The much-hyped introduction of semi-automated offside technology (SAOT) to the English Premier League will be delayed until at least the new year.
April 26 – Sweden is set to reject the introduction and implementation of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) after elite clubs voiced their opposition to the technology.
January 18 – Major League Soccer has named six tech start-ups who will form the launch companies supported by the new MLS Innovation Lab.
December 19 – The AFC have revealed that Semi-Automated Offside Technology (SAOT) will be used at the AFC Asian Cup in Qatar in January 2024, marking the first use of this technology at an AFC tournament.
December 12 – Germany’s Bundesliga 2 is set to embrace goal-line technology in the 2024-25 season for the first time.
October 6 – LaLiga partnered with sports startup accelerator SportsBoost, set up by legendary Spanish goalkeeper Iker Casillas, to hold a conference on Tuesday that probesd into the benefits of artificial intelligence through the lens of the sporting world.
May 9 – UEFA has signed an agreement with the European Space Agency (ESA) to share space technology solutions it has developed into the European football ecosystem.
August 10 – In a move that could revolutionise the game in terms of key on-field calls, semi-automated technology (SAOT) to speed up the time taken to reach offside decisions will be used in European club competition for the first time at the UEFA Super Cup tonight.
May 9 – Serie A has further embraced new sports video technology via a three-year deal with WSC Sports that will create real-time highlights.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 7 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino has leapt to the defence of VAR amid the chaos and confusion over marginal offside decisions and penalised accidental handballs that many feel are ruining the game as a spectacle.
November 20 – FIFA are taking steps to ensure marginal offside calls are determined by automated technology rather than the controversial VAR system of dotted lines and a second pair of eyes.
March 26 – As the fourth measure if its #SIGASTRIVES initiative the sports integrity body has called on technology companies to join the alliance.