Bay Area resident Stan Honey (USA), a three-time Emmy Winner for Technical Innovations in Sports TV Broadcast, the Rolex Yachtsman of the Year for 2010, member of the National Sailing Hall of Fame, and inventor on 29 patents, is Director of Technology for the 34th America's Cup by the America's Cup Event Authority (ACEA).
Honey has led the team which developed a system to track the America’s Cup catamarans to within 2cm, 5 times per second, and superimpose graphics elements such as ahead-behind lines and laylines on the live helicopter footage of the race. Previously America’s Cup broadcasts have only featured graphics visible in an animated view of the race. The new graphics package is designed to help viewers follow the intense action of the AC45s and AC72s as they scream around the race course, all in live action. Opportunities to utilize the detailed data from the races are also being reviewed for internet viewers, mobile viewers, and real-time game applications.
A major figure in technological innovation in sports television, Honey co-founded Sportvision in 1998, where he led the development of the yellow first-down line widely used in the broadcast of American football, the ESPN “K-Zone” baseball pitch tracking and highlighting system, and the Race/FX tracking and highlighting system used in NASCAR. Honey also is recognized as one of the most successful professional navigators in sailing, having navigated ABN AMRO to victory in the 2005-2006 Volvo Ocean Race and having navigated Groupama 3 in setting the Jules Verne record for the fastest circumnavigation of the world under sail in 2010. Honey was awarded the 2010 US Sailing Yachtsman of the Year Award, one of the highest individual honors in sailing in the U.S., and was named to the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2012.
In addition to use for broadcast, this tracking system will also be used the America’s Cup Race Management team to revolutionize the on the water management of the sport. With the ability to track the America’s Cup catamarans to within a two-centimeter accuracy on the race course, event organizers quickly saw the opportunity to leverage the system for on-the-water management of the sport. Telemetering of the course will allow for rapid movement of marks and controlling course limits, while use of real-time overlap and zone-entry determinations will enable umpires to make the most accurate decisions ever possible.
Prior to co-founding Sportvision in 1998, Stan Honey worked as Executive VP Technology for News Corporation from 1993 through 1998. Honey co-founded Etak Inc., the company that pioneered vehicle navigation systems, in 1983, which was sold to News Corporation in 1989 and is now part of TomTom. Honey is also an inventor on 8 patents in navigation technology and 21 patents in tracking and television special effects.
