Sailing, orienteering, air sports and adventure racing are nothing short of drama and excitement compared with their peers such as soccer and basketball. Yet they are less likely to engage audience and sponsors just because they are hard to visualize and follow.

Chris Terkelsen felt the frustration first-hand during his sports career up to the Danish National Team in Orienteering. The former World Champion (1997) and winner of the overall World Cup in orienteering (1998) explained, “Orienteering is about finding your route individually in the forest, completing the checking points in the shortest possible time, away from spectators’ eyes. It’s very difficult to visualize the sport and communicate to the audience.”  

The top athlete identified the market gap and turned that frustration to solutions by founding TracTrac in 2005. This GPS tracking service company has been dedicated to making various hard-to-follow sports engaging with special emphasis on sailing.

Challenge

Lack of visibility in sports events is not something that perplexes athletes and audience only. It severely limits the development of those sports in terms of scale, influence and profitability.

TracTrac, backed by its strategic hardware partner Queclink, delivers live GPS tracking solutions and brings much-needed visibility to hard-to-follow sports.

The bar for tracking devices used in sporting contests is quite high, according to Terkelsen, Co-founder and CEO of TracTrac. “We need very frequent tracking, very frequent sampling and very frequent transmission. We also need the flexibility of tracking devices to reconfigure to different sorts of transmission and sampling profiles, as well as some special features.”

Moreover, some sports events can be a test to the durability of trackers as much as to the endurance of athletes. For example, in sailing contests, the race boats can get wet frequently or even capsized in sea. Hostile weather and saltwater pose a harsh environment for electronics.

Solution

As a GPS sports tracking expert with over 17-year experience in the field, TracTrac was quite selective in choosing the hardware partner. When they found the manufacturer from Europe no longer met their evolving standards, they initiated a rigorous process to single out the best-suited hardware partner.

A long list of over 100 requirements was made first. After a round of market research, 60 different models and manufacturers of trackers were identified, and 8 of them were shortlisted afterwards. All those trackers from different manufacturers were brought in for testing.

“When you have so many requirements, it’s hard to find a tracker that fulfills all. When we tested and compared different trackers, the Queclink tracker was the one that came out on the top. We decided to use it. We have been working with different models of Queclink trackers since then,” said Terkelsen.

It was the Queclink GL300 series that came out on the top in this case and many others.

This best-selling asset tracker has been incorporated in TracTrac’s innovative tracking solutions for all sailing events ever since. It helps event organizers track sailors and boats, as well as set and adjust the racecourses.

The racecourse setting in sailing events depends on the wind direction and is thus dynamic. Queclink’s asset trackers are attached to the marker buoys, which are inflatable balloons put on water to indicate the course. With the location information they provide, the event officer can reconfigure the racecourse as wind changes and inform the sailors about the configuration and in what order they should pass the marker buoys.

The Queclink GL300 series is also carried by the sailors or installed on the boats to keep track of their trace in real time, as well as protect the security of the sailors.

Despite challenging work environment and demanding tracking, sampling and transmission requirements, “Queclink devices have been performing well in contests with their durability, lightweight, ease of use and ability to make custom adaptations to suit our specific requirements,” said Terkelsen.

Benefits

Event organizers can manage the races in a more organized and efficient way. Tracking helps them get a good overview of the race progress on different courses, as well as the whereabouts of race boats, athletes and marker buoys.

An extra layer of security is added to athletes, as they can press the panic button on the Queclink tracker in the event of danger in the risky sport.

The sponsoring income increases as the value of the events surges. “Suddenly they get the audience that would not be there without the data element,” said Terkelsen.

The sports have become easier to understand and more enjoyable for spectators onsite and online. The audience onsite can easily follow the contest on the TracTrac mobile app that includes the sponsor logos. Meanwhile, the tracking system pulls data from Queclink’s asset trackers to integrate with camera images for TV live streaming, so that the television viewing audience can follow the race progress in a glance of performance data such as the speed of individual teams, the distance between leaders and followers, the distance to the finish line and so forth.

“When you watch a sports competition, sometimes a team is missing on screen because the tracker goes wrong and misses the tracking data. That’s a big problem. But because of the reliability of Queclink’s trackers, that’s something that happens to us very rarely. In most events, we have a 100% completeness of data,” said Terkelsen.

The introduction of the GPS tracking technology to hard-to-follow sports by TracTrac and Queclink brings value and attention to many events that they deserve.

Enhance your asset tracking solutions with the globally recognized pioneer and innovator in battery-powered asset trackers. Learn more about Queclink’s static asset tracking solution at https://www.queclink.com/asset-security/ and real-time asset tracking solution at https://www.queclink.com/asset-tracking/.

About Queclink

Since 2009 Queclink Wireless Solutions has been “Driving Smarter IoT”.

Queclink is a pure play IoT hardware designer and manufacturer working with many well-known industrial and consumer companies to bring innovative IoT solutions to market. Its business units span transportation, asset and mobility, networks and agriculture. With 35 million IoT products delivered to over 140 countries, Queclink inspires data-driven solutions for its worldwide customers.

For more information, visit our website, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook or contact sales@queclink.com.

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