The Sports Business Journal Tech Awards underscored the expanding footprint of artificial intelligence across professional sports during their presentations between September 11 and September 12, 2026. The industry honors focused on deployments that move beyond experimental concepts into routine league operations. From tactile stadium experiences designed for visually impaired fans to biomechanical footwear sensors and enterprise-scale consumer analytics, the winners reflected rapid technological adoption across the athletic landscape. Observers viewed the accolades as concrete evidence that artificial intelligence has become a core operational asset spanning fan engagement, athlete welfare, and commercial enterprise.
Seattle-based startup OneCourt emerged as a standout winner at the event, securing both Sports Technology of the Year and Best in Fan Experience. The company uses computer vision and live tracking data from ongoing matches to translate on-field gameplay into real-time haptic vibration patterns on a specialized tactile tablet. This mechanism enables blind and visually impaired fans to trace ball trajectories, passing lanes, and player movements with their fingertips while seated in the stands. The system is already in active operation with the Brooklyn Nets and the LA Clippers in basketball, and it is currently undergoing pilot testing phases within the National Football League.
In the Best in AI category, the Elevate Performance and Insights Cloud, widely known as Elevate EPIC, secured the top award. The enterprise platform evaluates predictive data streams spanning more than 450 million individual fan profiles and 1.7 billion connected devices. Through this extensive analytical foundation, the system helps clubs manage fan preferences, automate dynamic ticket pricing models, and optimize retail merchandise campaigns. To date, over 230 professional sports organizations utilize the Elevate architecture to make data-driven commercial decisions and predict attendance patterns.
Athlete monitoring and injury prevention also marked major competitive milestones during the awards ceremony. In the Athlete Performance category, Plantiga earned top honors for its sensor-embedded insoles powered by artificial intelligence, which sit directly inside athletic footwear during live competition. The internal sensors record micro-movements, pressure shifts, and biomechanical load distributions without impeding athlete mobility. Crucially, the technology has secured formal competition approval from governing bodies including the NBA, the NFL, and FIFA for use in sanctioned professional matches.
The continuous data collected by Plantiga is evaluated by machine learning algorithms to identify subtle overload patterns and muscular strain before acute injuries occur. In addition to proactive injury mitigation, the system automatically compiles structured reports on player rehabilitation progress during recovery phases. Medical teams and athletic trainers receive quantifiable biomechanical benchmarks that remove guesswork from return-to-play timelines. This practical combination of wearable sensor hardware and algorithmic assessment underscores the growing role of predictive diagnostics in elite athletics.
The selections at the 2026 SBJ Tech Awards reflect a broader industry transition toward multimodal and integrated technology deployments. Modern sports franchises are moving away from fragmented, standalone tools in favor of unified systems that connect on-field tracking, neural network modeling, and massive consumer datasets. Whether enhancing accessibility for underserved audiences, shielding elite athletes from physical fatigue, or fine-tuning franchise ticketing operations, artificial intelligence is solidifying its position as an indispensable pillar of modern sports business.