This article examines the myriad ways in which RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification) technology will impact the world of sports. In this paper,
we look at how this “weird new media revolution” will have
a transformative impact both on the games themselves and the fans’
experience at the stadium. We will examine how RFID is being used in sport
applications from golf to soccer to racing of all forms to add previously
unimaginable real-time richness and accuracy to the sports. We will also
look at the use of RFID in ticketing and payment applications that will
add security, control, and new revenue streams to sports operations, while
giving enhanced value and services to the fan. We will conclude with a
look at what this new version of Sports 2.0 will mean in the future both
in and out of the sporting arena.
Introduction
RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification, and it is poised to be
the successor technology to the bar code in identifying “things”
in our economy. Using small microchips embedded in objects, RFID can create
unimaginable levels of control and visibility in a whole host of applications.
Evidence of such can be seen in the mandates of major retailers, such
as Wal-Mart, Target, and Albertson’s, along with the U.S. Department
of Defense, to have their suppliers begin affixing RFID-enabled labels
to shipments of goods to their distribution centers (Morphy, 2005, n.p.).
As outlined in Table 1, RFID is currently being employed in a whole host
of areas.
Table 1 – RFID Applications
| Traditional RFID Applications | Emerging RFID Applications |
|
|
Source: Wyld (2006, p. 159)
While creating new efficiencies in distribution and new opportunities in
retail may mean billions of dollars and while the application of RFID in
pharmaceutical and animal tracking applications may save thousands of lives,
the wide world of sports is no doubt one of the sexiest applications for
RFID on the horizon. It is also an area where RFID can enhance both the
participant and the spectator experience, impacting people’s lives
in a positive manner. As such, innovative companies across the globe are
rushing into sports applications for the technology.
Take golf balls for example. Anyone who has picked-up a golf club has
been there. You hit your drive off the 1st tee, and it goes, and goes,
and goes – where? All golfers have spent countless hours combing
the banks of creeks, looking in crevices, and pouring through thickets
in often fruitless searches for their wayward shots. But what if there
was a high-tech way for the ball to tell you where it was and guide you
to it? Radar Golf is a small company, based in Roseville, California,
seeking to RFID-enable the game of golf with its Radar Golf System. Such
a prospect led Stephanie Stahl (2005), the editor of InformationWeek,
to say that finding lost golf balls may be the “killer app”
for RFID in the consumer world.
Radar Golf has developed a golf ball that is manufactured by a Chinese
contractor that has an RFID tag embedded inside its core. The ball has
been certified as conforming to the rigorous standards of the United States
Golf Association (USGA), enabling it to be used in tournament play. The
company’s patented Ball Positioning System (BPS) is built into a
handheld unit, which is essentially an RFID reader that transmits a specific
radio frequency signal to search for the lost ball. It provides a visual
LCD signal strength display and pulsed audio tone feedback to the golfer
looking for his/her ball, with the beep increasing (like a Geiger counter)
as the golfer nears the location of the wayward ball. The BPS presently
has a detection range of up to 100 feet (LaPedus, 2005). The company began
marketing the system in mid-2005. The Radar Golf System retails for $249,
which includes a dozen golf balls (additional dozen balls sets retail
for $39). It plans to license the technology to other golf ball manufacturers
to equip their branded balls with RFID tags (LaPedus, 2005).
We are seeing that, as with the golf ball example, games themselves can
be enhanced through the use of RFID technology. We are also seeing that
RFID can be used to secure ticketing and enhance the in-stadium spectator
experience. RFID can also create new metrics – and new gambling
opportunities – in the sports world. In this article, we will take
a look at Sports 2.0, as RFID helps reshape the sporting life and experience.
RFID on the Field
RFID is fast getting “in the game,” as we are seeing exciting,
in-event applications of RFID technology in sports ranging from the “beautiful
game” to road racing of every form.
Football (Soccer)
Indeed, the most noteworthy in-game example to date comes in the world’s
most popular sport – football (or soccer as we in the U.S. know
it). The Erlangen, Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits
has developed an RFID-based system to give complete visibility to the
soccer field. Both the ball and a shin-guard on each of the twenty-two
players are outfitted with RFID-chips, and readers positioned to scan
the entire field can read the position of both the players and the “Smartball”
up to two thousand times each second. The Fraunhofer system will not only
allow for referees to consult the data to potentially aid in correctly
calling disputed goals and troublesome off-sides penalties, but it will
permit soccer clubs and their fans to access performance metrics on their
teams and individual players. Although FIFA (Fédération
Internationale de Football Association), soccer’s world governing
body, passed on using the technology for the 2006 World Cup, the system
is likely to be approved for tournament use later this year (Collins,
2005).
Racing
We have also seen that RFID can add value and visibility to racing events
of all types. One of the longest standing applications of RFID has been
in the area of marathon racing. The ChampionChip Company pioneered the
use of RFID-chips attached to runners in the Berlin Marathon in 1994.
Since then, the firm’s namesake tracking device has been worn by
millions of road racers, cyclists, in-line skaters, cross-country skiers,
and triathletes in thousands of events worldwide. The tracking device,
which uses passive RFID technology with antennas built into specially-designed
mats over which the athletes must pass, allows for the racers’ real,
net times to be recorded as they pass the start-finish and other intervals
along the course, as well as the “value-add” of for real-time
tracking via the Internet for friends, fans, press, and family members.
It has been used in the New York City Marathon, where five thousand runners
per minute crossed the thirty-six meters-wide starting line at the Verrazano
Narrows Bridge. And in the June 2000 Broloppet Half Marathon, in which
runners raced across the new bridge connecting between Denmark and Sweden,
a record 79,837 competitors were tracked using the ChampionChip (ChampionChip,
2006). Commenting on the state of marathon technology, Judith Donohue,
manager of the HP’s New England Initiative, whose firm has worked
with the Boston Marathon for over a decade, observed: “We’ve come
a long way from when we used to draw a line in the street with chalk”
(quoted in Ewalt, 2004, n.p.).
RFID has moved into a motor racing. Texas Instruments has developed the
Race Timer system for motorcycle racing, in which an RFID transponder
is placed either on the motorcycle’s front fender or in the rider’s
chest protector. The system is a quantum improvement over the former use
of single-file gates and either manual recording or scanning bar codes
attached to riders’ helmets. With the TI system, the size of motorcycle
events can grow significantly, supporting up to one thousand riders in
a single event (Texas Instruments, 2005). RFID has also been adopted by
the IRL (Indy Racing League), with active transponders being positioned
in the same point in the nose of the Indy Car and with antennas positioned
around – and in – the track. With speeds of over two-hundred
miles per hour, the system can distinguish between two or more racecars
passing the same point within 10,000ths of a second of each other. The
system allows for real-time race tracking via the Internet for all IRL
races, including the Indianapolis 500, where antennas are installed in
the track surface in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s famous Yard
of Bricks at the start-finish line of the “Old Brickyard”
as the track is known (Karle, 2004).
While NASCAR has not announced a similar in-race system, the fast-growing
racing circuit is employing RFID for tracking tires used by all racing
teams in its three racing circuits. The system will enable for centralized
control over the Goodyear tires used in NASCAR events, in order to allow
for an even playing field between the race teams and better control over
tire stock (Anonymous, 2005). RFID also presents a very practical advantage
over the former bar-code based labeling of tires for NASCAR events. Goodyear
had in the past attempted to track tire inventory for race teams by applying
bar code labels to the sidewalls. However, they quickly found that the
bar code labels could be intentionally rubbed off or smudged when in use
(Sullivan, 2005). With the new system, the tire inventory is centralized
by NASCAR, and race officials can use handheld readers to quickly scan
both cars and the pits to make sure they have the proper quantity and
type of tires in their possession before, during, and after the races
(Swedberg, 2005).
Finally, in a slower speed form of racing, RFID has been introduced in
the ancient sport of pigeon racing. In the past, to determine timing and
ranking in pigeon races, handlers had to catch pigeons one-by-one and
read an identification number from metal rings attached to their legs.
Today, the standard practice for almost a decade has been to attach RFID-enabled
plastic bands to the birds’ legs with the positioning of antennas
at points along the course from the release point to the home loft (Anonymous,
1997).
RFID in the Arena
RFID-enabled Paper Ticketing
There have been exciting developments recently to integrating RFID chips
into a paper-form ticket. Doing so has several advantages, including:
- Preventing counterfeiting
- Promoting security
- Inhibiting the secondary “black market” for prized tickets
- Facilitating faster patron entry into sports venues.
The recently concluded FIFA World Cup in Germany was the largest use
of RFID in sports ticketing to date, with:
- Twelve venues
- Sixty-four games
- 3.5 million tickets (Blau, 2006a).
FIFA had previously employed RFID-equipped tickets in its “dry
run” for the 2006 event in staging its Confederations Cup in Germany
in 2005 (Blau, 2006b).
The World Cup ticketing was based on Philips Electronics MIFARE technology,
enabling ticket-holders to gain entrance to the venues by sliding their
tickets into fixed scanners, positioned at the entry gates to the stadiums.
As can be seen in Figure 1, the tickets are personalized with the name
of the ticket buyer. While FIFA collects identification information on
all ticket buyers, the RFID tag does not contain info on the ticket holder,
only access information for the FIFA ticketing system (Stensgaard, 2006).
Figure 1 – World Cup Tickets
Besides security concerns, one of the principal reasons FIFA chose to
employ RFID-based security in its ticketing for the World Cup was out
the organizer’s desire to significantly cut down on the secondary
or “black market” for these highly coveted tickets, which
FIFA prohibits from sale or transfer outside of family members except
in cases of undue hardship (Blau, 2006b). According to Carrie Johnson,
an e-commerce analyst for Forrester Research, the size of the global secondary-ticket
market is difficult to precisely pin down, with projections ranging anywhere
from $2 to $25 billion annually (cited in Sandoval, 2006). While World
Cup tickets for this year’s event averaged approximately a $180
face value, one estimate from the United Kingdom projected that FIFA leaves
as much as $3.6 billion (US) on the table by not charging market rates
for tickets (Blau, 2006a). FIFA’s prohibition on illegal ticket
sales, whether by what are known as “ticket brokers,” “scalpers,”
or “touts” by region, has not stopped those engaged in the
banned practice from trying to sell tickets. In fact, bids rose to $3000
or more per seat on eBay for World Cup tickets, even though the buyer
had no assurance they could actually enter the venue with a ticket, the
name on which could not possibly match the ticket holder (Kelly, 2006).
Buyers were betting on the fact that gate personnel would not bother checking
the ticket holder’s ID to match the name on the ticket to the person
presenting it at the turnstile – a bet lost by some fans, according
to media reports from the game sites. One sports industry analyst stated
that better control over the pricing of tickets brings FIFA additional
worldwide revenues in areas such as licensing, sponsorship, and broadcast
rights through marketing the World Cup as a “people’s game,”
rather than as entertainment for the wealthy and powerful (Higgitt, 2006).
Still, it is not a fool-proof system, as even one member of the FIFA Executive
Committee, Ismail Bhamjee of Botswana, was asked to leave Germany during
the World Cup when it was discovered that he had sold match tickets for
the England versus Trinidad and Tobago game for more than three times
their face value (Anonymous, 2006a).
Certainly, preventing counterfeit tickets from being presented at the
turnstile is a concern of any promoter of a sporting event – from
one as large as the World Cup, as pricey as the Super Bowl, or for hosts
of professional sports events and even prestigious amateur competitions,
such as college football games and skating championships. For instance,
at this year’s Super Bowl XL in Detroit, local police arrested twelve
people on felony charges for selling counterfeit Super Bowl tickets, and
seventy-three bogus tickets were confiscated from people who tried to
enter Detroit’s Ford Field on the day of the game (Anonymous, 2006b).
How can RFID help to curb counterfeiting? In November 2005, Texas Instrument’s
Tag-It RFID inlays were embedded into all 100,000 tickets for the Tennis
Master’s Cup 2005, held in Shanghai, China. The event organizers
used sixteen stationary readers at the entrance gates to Shanghai’s
Qi Zhong stadium, which is slated to host the event for three consecutive
years through 2007. As Yang Yibin, Deputy General Manager of New Sports
and Entertainment (Shanghai) Ltd., a subsidiary of the Ba-Shi Group, explained:
“Prior to using RFID, spectators were required to purchase a pre-event
ticket holder and then exchange it for the physical ticket at the stadium
box office. This new system not only offers peace of mind that the tickets
purchased are genuine, it puts tickets in the purchaser’s hands faster
and provides more efficient entry come event time” (quoted in O’Connor,
2005b, n.p.). In addition to the gate verification of the ticket, New
Sports and Entertainment outfitted event staff members with handheld RFID
readers to spot check tickets inside the stadium for an added level of
security (O’Connor, 2005b).
Many of the best practices and lessons learned emerging from the FIFA
World Cup and other high profile events will be employed at the next global
sports event on the horizon at which organizers plan to use RFID-based
ticketing – the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics (Campbell, 2005).
RFID-enabled Smart Cards – The “Golden Ticket”?
The hybrid solution of RFID-enabled, paper-form tickets may be a short-term
solution to the problems of crowd control, security, and resale prevention.
Indeed, the longer-term solution may be a move away from hard copy tickets
entirely to an electronic “Golden Ticket,” – a smart
card solution that offers benefits in both ticketing and payments.
That is the vision of a number of competing firms today. Stadiacard,
a division of the UK-based TelCo Management Limited, is working with several
leading football clubs in the UK in proving the viability of such a contactless
card solution. Most notably, there is the example of the Liverpool Football
Club, which has been at the forefront of using contactless technology
in its stadium since 2003. For the upcoming 2006/2007 season, the Liverpool
Club, winners of the 2006 FA Cup, will be shifting its season ticket buyers
entirely to Stadiacard’s contactless solution, providing them with
what they are branding as the Fan Card. Liverpool has now equipped its
historic Anfield Stadium, which dates back to 1884, with readers at all
of its entry gates. The Liverpool Club believes that the system will not
only speed entry of season ticket holders into the stadium, but also eliminate
the possibility that these buyers could resell individual game tickets
from their season-long package or provide them to “ticket touters.”
This is because the Fan Card will be required for entry throughout the
season. If sold, the season ticket purchaser would lose the right to enter
the stadium for not just a single match or series of games, but the remainder
of the season. While Anfield only has a capacity of 45,400 seats, the
Liverpool club has issued over 130,000 Fan Cards to date. Supporters who
are not season ticket holders can use their Fan Cards as ID when purchasing
individual game tickets via the phone or the Internet (Stadiacard, 2006).
A similar solution, also aimed for the football market, is being marketed
by the St. Andrews, Scotland-based Scotcomms Technology Group. Scotcomms
TeamCard contactless solution is being employed by several leading football
clubs in the UK, including:
- Bolton Wanderers
- The Celtic (Glasgow)
- Chelsea
- Crystal Palace
- Everton
- Ipswich Town
- Millwall (Scotcomms Technology Group, 2006).
One of the significant benefits of such contactless ticketing is the
ability of the sports’ team/club to derive incremental revenue from
what would have been unused tickets by season ticket holders. One of the
British football clubs making use of the TeamCard, the Bolton Wanderers,
has turned a season ticket holder’s inability to attend a game into
a “win-win” for all parties. Gareth Moores, a director of
the club, estimates that 5-8% of season ticket holders can not attend
a given game. The Bolton Club rewards season ticket holders who notify
the organization in advance of their inability to attend a game with £10
worth of points loaded onto their TeamCard. These points can then be used
for purchasing either refreshments in the club’s stadium or team
merchandise from the club. The club is then able to resell that unused
seat – for an average profit of £15. Likewise, football clubs
have begun to offer seating upgrades to better sections on an availability
bases to card holders, with the ability to charge their registered payment
option immediately should they choose to sit in a better seat for an event
(Thomas, 2004).
There is also a significant security benefit to the use of contactless
tickets for sporting events in general and for football specifically.
Unlike with paper-form tickets, if a fan’s ticket card is lost or
stolen, the team can simply issue a replacement and cancel out the original
lost item. Also, the team retains significant control over the use of
the card, which is especially important in venues such as football in
England, where crowd rowdiness and hooliganism has been of paramount concern
in recent years. If a team can identify trouble making fans, they can
simply deactivate that person’s contactless ticket card and ban
them from the grounds. In the same fashion, as has been done in Liverpool
since the 2003/2004 season, stadium security and support personnel have
themselves been issued contactless cards, allowing for the club to maintain
required staffing levels throughout the stadium and monitor staff movement
for both management and payroll purposes. Finally, since the fan’s
card also operates as a form of payment in the stadium, the benefits of
contactless payments at concessions and merchandise sales locations can
be reaped. And, in the United Kindgom, unlike at sports venues in the
United States, where sports betting is not legal in the stadium setting,
fans can place wagers before and even during games using the same contactless
ticket card (Scotcomms Technology Group, 2006; Stadiacard, 2006; and Thomas,
2004).
Michael Richardson, Chief Technology Officer of New York-based Smart
System Technologies (SST), points to the fact that professional sports
teams “have to look for new ways to raise incremental revenues beyond
selling seats” (quoted in Collins, 2004, n.p.). Contactless payment
technologies, integrating RFID into either credit cards or key fobs, may
indeed be the key to unlocking more revenue potential from fans inside
the stadium. Early trials of such systems have been promising. In one
pilot, fans using the PowerPass system of New York-based Smart System
Technologies (SST) consistently bought double the amount of brewskis,
hot dogs, foam fingers, and other concession items, while speeding the
transactions (between two and six times faster than cash or credit card)
and taking cash-handling out of the equation (Collins, 2004).
This season, Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers have worked
in partnership with Chase to provide their fans with the convenience of
contactless payment technology. During the 2005 season, only one concession
stand at Ameriquest Field in Arlington, Texas was even equipped to accept
credit-card payments. For this season, the Rangers have installed more
than two-hundred contactless credit-card terminals throughout the ballpark,
at a cost of approximately $150 each. According to Scott Rau, a Senior
Vice President for Chase, contactless cards can take thirty seconds off
the time required for each cash transaction. Thus, fans can speed through
the process of buying concessions and souvenirs in the stadium, enhancing
the spectator experience by reducing their time waiting in lines and not
enjoying the event. Rangers Vice President Brad Alberts is excited about
the new technology, believing “it’s easier for the fans, it’s quicker
for the fans, and people will probably spend more money” (quoted
in Koenig, 2006, n.p.). The system is expected to grow in use as Chase
distributes more of its branded credit cards with contactless payment
capabilities. As of June, the company has distributed over seven-million
of their “blink” cards in major metropolitan areas in the
U.S., including the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, home of the Texas Rangers
(Koenig, 2006).
At present, MasterCard is undoubtedly the leader in the field. MasterCard’s
PayPass technology has been implemented to date in a total of nine Major
League Baseball ballparks and seven National Football League stadiums
(Anonymous, 2006c). These current installations are detailed in Table
2 below.
Table 2 – Stadiums in the United Stateswith PayPass Installations
| Major League Baseball | National Football League |
|
|
Source Info: MasterCard International – June 2006
From the perspective of Lawrence Flanagan, Worldwide Chief Marketing
Officer for MasterCard International, “stadiums represent the ideal
venues to showcase the promise of PayPass,” which the firm is fast-expanding
in its credit card operations (quoted in Anonymous, 2006c, n.p.).
What’s the next level for contactless payments? Well, it can be
found in Atlanta’s Philips Arena. In a test that began earlier this
year, 250 season ticket holders of the Atlanta Thrashers NHL hockey team
and the Atlanta Hawks NBA basketball team are receiving a specially NFC
(near field communication)-enabled Nokia cell phone which they can then
use in the arena for concession payments. Moreover, the cell phones can
detect the passive RFID tags embedded in “smart posters” positioned
around Philips Arena. With the phone held within a few inches of the poster,
they can download news, graphics (such as pictures of players or wallpaper
images) and promotional video clips which are presently inaccessible by
the general public (O’Connor, 2005c). According to a recently released
study from Philips Electronics and Visa International on the utility of
Near Field Communication (NFC) and contactless payment technology, consumers
like the convenience, ease of use, and “coolness” of making
transactions with their mobile phones (Philips Semiconductors, 2006).
Analysis
Will RFID be “the next big thing?” At this point in the technology’s
life cycle, it is too early for anyone to tell, but the stars certainly
seem to be in alignment for the next decade to be a tremendously exciting
one. Many share the sentiment of Kuchinskas (2005) that: “RFID will
change business and society as much as cell phones and the Internet have”
(n.p.). Futurist Paul Saffo believes that we are in the early stages of
“a weird new kind of media revolution,” in that “RFID
will make possible new companies that do things we don’t even dream about”
(quoted in Van, 2005, B1). Saffo views RFID as a media technology, making
it possible for what he categorizes as “’smartifacts’
or intelligent artifacts, that are observing the world on our behalf and
increasingly manipulating it on our behalf.” Saffo thus stresses
the importance of thinking outside the box on RFID and looking beyond
today’s problems to find “unexpected applications,”
which is where “the greatest potential for RFID lies” (quoted
in O’Connor, 2005a, n.p.).
Today, we are seeing the first fruits of this “weird” new
media revolution that RFID is sparking, including those found in the sports
field. What we are seeing with the advent of RFID in the sports marketplace
is the introduction of a technology that has the power to transform the
experience of playing and watching games. Sports 2.0 promises to be an
exciting – and richer – experience, and it will be interesting
to observe the innovations that will surely come over the next few years
as RFID-based applications become more commonplace in sporting venues.
What does all this portend for the “Average Joe Six-Pack”
sports fan? As a player, as a coach, as a spectator, and as a gambler,
RFID is on tap to transform the sports world over the next decade. We
will see RFID-based systems replace some of the fundamental rule elements
of sports, to the betterment of the game. After all, it is hard to believe
that in 2006, the way we measure first downs in football is with a chain!
We may also see the automation of some routine scoring and statistics
compiled in major sporting events, such as line crossings in a wide variety
of sports and distance calculations in golf. RFID will also bring heretofore
unimaginable levels of information and intelligence to our games. Already,
there is speculation that RFID may enable new forms of wagering on sporting
events with the new metrics that can be uncovered by RFID-chipping of
balls and players, making new opportunities for casinos and sports books.
In baseball for instance, RFID could enable gamblers to bet on things
– in real-time – like the precise distance of a home run and
the positioning of individual pitches. Finally, there is speculation that
some players and teams may not want to release such new statistics, such
as how far they ran during a soccer or football game, for fear of revealing
efforts that they may not be especially proud of. This is hardly information
overload; it’s revolutionary on many, many levels.
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- O’Connor, Mary Catherine (2005a). “RFID and the media revolution: Renowned futurist Paul Saffo predicts that RFID’s biggest impact will come from surprising applications.” RFID Journal, (April 13, 2005). Retrieved April 20, 2005, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1508/1/1/.
- O’Connor, Mary Catherine (2005b). “RFID takes a swing at ticket fraud: By embedding RFID tags into tickets for the Tennis Masters Cup 2005, organizers were able to curtail counterfeiting, increase revenues and speed patrons’ entry into the stadium.” RFID Journal, (April 13, 2005). Retrieved May 14, 2006, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2060/1/1/.
- O’Connor, Mary Catherine (2005c). “Sports fans use RFID to pay and play: A group of season ticket holders at Atlanta’s Philips Arena can use RFID-enabled cell phones to download video clips and pictures of players—and, eventually, to make purchases.” RFID Journal, (December 16, 2005). Retrieved June 30, 2006, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2051/1/1/.
- Philips Semiconductors (2006). “How would you like to pay for that? Cash, card or phone? Philips and Visa usability study shows consumers like the convenience of contactless payment using Near Field Communication.” Semiconductor News, April 5, 2006. Retrieved July 6, 2006, from http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/news/content/file_1231.html.
- Sandoval, Greg (2006). “Can the Net make ticket scalping legit?” News.com, June 5, 2006. Retrieved June 15, 2006, from http://news.com.com/Can+the+Net+make+ticket+scalping+legit/2100-1032_3-6079684.html.
- Scotcomms Technology Group (2006). TeamCard. Retrieved June 28, 2006, from http://www.scotcomms.co.uk/pdfs/teamcard_all.pdf.
- Stadiacard (2006). “Membership Card – One customer, one membership card and one record.” Retrieved May 12, 2006, from http://www.stadiacard.com/marketing/membership_card.html.
- Stahl, Stephanie (2005). “Editor’s note: RFID at the core of biz processes.” InformationWeek, January 31, 2005. Retrieved from the web on February 1, 2005. Available at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=59100620.
- Stensgaard, Anne-Birte (2006). “Philips and the 2006 FIFA World Cup.” AME Info, June 8, 2006. Retrieved June 15, 2006, from http://www.ameinfo.com/88301.html.
- Sullivan, Laurie (2005). “RFID rolls into NASCAR races: Goodyear will provide to racing-teams tires that have RFID devices embedded into the sidewalls.”
- InformationWeek, November 28, 2005. Retrieved February 15, 2006, from http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=174401417.
- Swedberg, Claire (2005). “RFID tracks tires at NASCAR: Goodyear used handheld interrogators and embedded tags to keep track of leased racecar tires.” RFID Journal, November 25, 2005. Retrieved February 15, 2006, from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2006/1/1/.
- Texas Instruments (2005). “Sports timing: Changing the profile of racing events.” Retrieved July 7, 2005, from http://www.ti.com/rfid/docs/applications/sports.shtml.
- Thomas, Daniel (2004). “Sports clubs kick off with smart ticketing.” VnunetNews, February 6, 2004. Retrieved May 13, 2006, from http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2124268/sports-clubs-kick-smart-ticketing.
- Van, Jon (2005). “RFID spells media revolution, futurist says.” Chicago Tribune, 124(104) (April 16, 2005): B1.
- Wyld, David (2006). “RFID 101: The next big thing for management.” Management Research News, 29(4): 154-173. For a detailed and highly readable look at RFID technology, please consult the following report: Wyld, David C. (2005) RFID: The right frequency for government, A research monograph published by The IBM Center for the Business of Government, Washington, DC, October 2005. Retrieved October 23, 2005, from http://www.businessofgovernment.org/main/publications/grant_reports/details/index.asp?gid=232.
