Connected Footballs

Would you be excited if you knew exactly how fast Peyton Manning of the Broncos was throwing a football in the Super Bowl? Or would you like to know just how perfect a spiral Cam Newton of the Panthers threw on his last play?

With a Wilson X Connected Football, you would be able to do just that. That’s why Wilson Sporting Goods is making the rounds with a beta version of its new smart football, which is part of the larger trend of connecting sports devices that allow you to more easily measure and improve your sports performance. Such devices are one of the hot trends driving the Internet of Things market, which is expected to be worth $29.5 billion by 2020, according to market researcher IDC.

Wilson Sporting Goods has made the official football of the NFL since 1941. But pretty soon, those footballs are going to be a little different, as they’ll have a small chip inside them that enables them to connect to a smartphone. The Wilson football — a follow-on product to the smart basketball the company launched last September — has accelerometers for detecting motion, a processor, and a Bluetooth connection so you can send the data to a smartphone. Looking at it, you can’t tell it apart from a regular football, except for the lettering that says “connected football.”