December 2008 Newsletter
Welcome to the Design for Sport newsletter. We hope you enjoy it and feel able to contribute to future editions - our aim is to showcase the role of innovation and great design.
Innovation
This is a new product from the States (and only available there presently) that attempts to link movement and activity with eating and weight loss.
Comprising a tricep-mounted pod the Bodybugg analyses the movement of the body and combines that with sweat readings from the skin to gauge calorific burn. You can then download that data to a PC and thence to a website that will advise you on what you need to eat to stay below the energy that your body has used during the day. And it includes recipes as well. It also comes with a watch / monitor that will give you more data such as calories / min and intensity.
We really like this product, it is very consumer friendly and looks like a diet aid whilst actually being a piece of sports equipment.
More News
A recent MORI poll commissioned by Sport England has concluded that the number of people participating in sport has risen by over half a million. The Active People Survey 2, shows that the number of men regularly playing sport has risen by 311,000 to 4.04 million, while the number of women completing three sessions of sport each week has increased by 240,000 to 2.81 million.
Although we remain sceptical of Sport England's motives (since their reason for being seems to be to modify the criteria that statistics are judged by, to achieve their own or Government objectives), if this is taken at face value then it's great news for the sports business.
Gerry Sutcliffe, the sports minister has said that he wants to see another million people participating in sport in 2012. A little massage of the criteria and I'm sure he'll have his wish!
Olympic News
Lord Coe has said that tickets for the 2012 games will be mostly distributed through sports clubs rather than sold through ticket agencies or at the gate. He is quoted as saying that "could be a 'serious message' that if you want to watch the Olympics you need to join a sports club now". LOCOG are studying the way that tickets are allocated by the LTA for Wimbledon and by the RFU for Twickenham rugby. Both are based on club membership, with a smaller number of tickets available to non-members.
There is also talk of sophisticated ticket tracking technology allowing the re-selling of tickets after spectators have left the venue. An attempt to avoid the embarrassing scenes in Beijing where rows of empty seats were clearly visible after the local interest had gone out. The LOCOG chief executive, Paul Deighton, said, "If people leave early, we'll have some technology in place that will quickly scan the ticket and resell it. It might say 'If you turn up at x, y, z in five minutes, there's a fencing ticket for you.'