Takedown Report

The Impact of Technology on Wrestling

BY MATT KRUMRIE 
Jason Bryant remembers his first trip to Fargo to cover USA Wrestling’s Cadet and Junior Nationals in 1999. “We had hand-written vertically paired brackets, dial-up Internet and zero social media,” says Bryant, who later worked for USA Wrestling in a communications role.

Fast-forward 20 years to the 2019 Cadet and Junior Nationals, held in Fargo in mid-July. Bryant has created the Mat Talk Podcast Network, the leading podcast network in the sport of wrestling. While in Fargo covering the event, he conducted a number of on-site interviews and 10-minute features, then twice during the week, he did a media collaboration between his network at Mat Talk Online, FloWrestling, and The Open Mat, a popular wrestling news and information website. “We had three to four people in a live show streaming from Herd & Horns (a Fargo Sports Bar and Grill) and all the streaming info was coming right from my iPad over the restaurant’s Wi-Fi,” says Bryant, now also an 11-time wrestling journalism and broadcasting award winner. “We also watched the rest of the round from Herd & Horns because they had the technology to bring a livestream from the web and put FloWrestling up on their TVs. That was unheard of when I first started coming to Fargo.”

It’s no secret that high speed internet, wireless access, and smartphones have changed the way the world can connect, and that is making an impact across the sport of wrestling. Free video hosting platforms and inexpensive digital video cameras have become standard, not just for the major media players, but for state associations, too. “When you tie in video and live streaming with tournament software like FloArena or Trackwrestling, there’s really no reason—other than access to high speed internet or a tight budget—wrestling fans can’t get scores and match video as they happen,” Bryant says. Rest of the story at
https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Wrestling/Features/2019/August/01/The-Impact-of-Technology-on-Wrestling?mc_cid=0627ee2afe&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

August 12, 2019 - Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized