We’re only a little over a month away from the 2025 NFL season kicking off in the US, and the league is finally putting pen to paper with a long-standing partner. Sony, who you may know for excellent earbuds and super-bright TVs, has been working with the National Football League for quite some time – sometimes directly and other times with broadcasters that use Sony cameras for their NFL coverage.
Now, though, Sony is the NFL’s official technology partner and also the sport’s official headphones supplier. In a joint statement, both promise to “transform the future of football” for coaches, players, and fans, whether they’re packed into the rafters at a stadium or watching from home.
Ahead of the news, TechRadar had the chance to talk with Neal Manowitz, Sony’s Electronics North America President and COO, and Gary Brantley, the NFL’s Chief Information Officer and SVP, to unpack some key elements of the partnership. Both emphasized the importance of accuracy, with Brantley noting that a key advantage here would be to improve on that and potentially speeding up on-field play.
In previous seasons, Sony’s Hawk-Eye Technology has been used for officiating, whether checking or double-checking a call or reviewing footage from optical cameras. Sony deployed about 115 for the Super Bowl compared to about 35-50 at a regular season game. Brantley noted that it’s “a foundational component that’s been there and been reliable.” It’s something that is fairly, critically important as it could help determine if a call is valid, or likely impact the final score.
While neither would give out specifics, we’ll likely see more Hawk-Eye being used behind the scenes to speed up calls and potentially measurements, like yardage, throughout a game. And while this technology is mostly behind the scenes, it comes into view during the broadcast, with elements being displayed over the field as real-time visualizations or even shown on screens at the game.
Most of the time, that view comes from a Sony studio-grade broadcast camera, but the technology giant and the NFL have also flexed some muscles with more unique setups. For instance, during the last Super Bowl, Sony deployed its Sony A7R IV camera on the field with a special lens for up-close shots, essentially using a different type of camera to bring you closer to the action. Manowitz noted that there were 165 cameras deployed to capture the event. He explained that for stills photography – for which Sony has been the exclusive hardware supplier to the Associated Press since 2020 – Sony paired an A7 with a special transmitter to get photos uploaded and transmitted faster.
Looking at the future, though, it’s clear that Sony and the NFL also want the partnership to build on new experiences. For instance, Disney Plus hosted a ‘Toy Story Funday Football’ themed version of an NFL game, which was largely made possible thanks to Sony’s Beyond Sports technology. Essentially, the footage is taken from various cameras and used simultaneously to create a new visual experience. Manowitz succinctly summed it up as “40,000 points of data collected every second and it [Sony Beyond Sports] turns that into a game.”
In this case, it was presenting it under the lens of Toy Story, but he shared, “if you think about next generation of NFL fans, this is the entry point and learning about the game of football and it’s exciting them. It’s also bringing the parents and the kids together so that they’re both getting entertained in a totally new way.” To a degree, it’s an impressive tech feat and turned out to be the biggest Disney Plus live event thus far. Still, from a technology perspective, it teases a wide array of possibilities for the future with other collaborations.
Still, between working to speed up the game and ensure accuracy, there are some opportunities for further innovation that Sony’s partnership with the NFL will hopefully produce. What’s one? Well, we know for sure that Sony will introduce a sideline headset for use by the coaching staff in the 2025 season, which, according to Manowitz, has been in development for years.
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jacob.krol@futurenet.com (Jacob Krol)
