Brace Yourself Las Vegas, CES Starts This Week (And Yes, CES Includes Sports)

January 5, 2020January 5, 2020 Alan Snel Adam Silver, Gary Bettman

By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com

It’s that wonderful techy time of year in Las Vegas, when 60,000 international CES trade show visitors and more than 100,000 of their domestic USA gadget-peddling guests descend on Las Vegas in early January much like the hordes of grasshoppers that paid a visit to Sin City this past year.

Naturally, the Big 3 convention centers — publicly-owned Las Vegas Convention Center, Sheldon Adelson’s Sands Expo and MGM Resorts International’s Mandalay Bay Convention Center — are packed on every square inch of floor space with everything from robots and sex toys (wait until CES has a booth combining those two) to self-driving cars and a water efficiency product called Phyn because no company uses conventional spelling for products these days.

The Strip and all the parallel roads and side streets will be clogged with traffic this week, while more than a dozen sites and venues host Las Vegas’ biggest trade show. In the days leading up to CES, if you wandered anywhere near the Las Vegas Convention Center you would think you got lost at a forklift operators convention.

Naturally, the people who run the sports industry have taken notice of the big crowds and it’s typical to see professional sports league commissioners and team executives at the many breakout sessions and even former sports team jocks pitching products.

On Sunday at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, companies from around the world gave their pitches on their products.

Here’s a football helmet with cameras that stream action from the player’s perspective.

Helmet with built-in cameras. Orbi is the company, based in Berkeley, California.

Let’s check out a smart watch from Finland. It’s Matt Mitchell from Suunto.

And, check out an anti-theft bicycle device from San Francisco-based Mimicbike. Here’s company founder/president Serdar Serttop.

You might recall, the National Hockey League and its commissioner, Gary Bettman, was in town for the 2019 CES because the league was checking out data-tracking sensors on player uniforms, while NBA Commissioner Adam Silver visited Las Vegas to chat about Twitter.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver (the tall guy) at CES last year.

The sports industry has a big stake in CES with sessions on sports gambling and sports marketing, for example.

One of my favorite sports products being promoted at CES is a camera designed to make judgements in the sport of fencing. I love this headline because this kind of press release language is needed in the NFL to mend the blown calls of officials.