We’re just over a month away from the 2025 NFL season kicking off in the U.S., and the league is finally signing on to a long-term partner. Sony, who you may know from excellent earbuds And super bright tvshas been working with the National Football League for some time – sometimes directly and sometimes with broadcasters who use Sony cameras for their NFL coverage.
Now, Sony is the NFL’s official technology partner, as well as the sport’s official headset supplier. In a joint statement, the two parties pledge to “transform the future of football” for coaches, players and fans, whether they’re in the stadium or watching from home.
Ahead of the news, TechRadar had the chance to sit down with Neal Manowitz, Sony’s Electronics North America President and COO, and Gary Brantley, the NFL’s Chief Information Officer and SVP, to unpack some of the key elements of the partnership. Both emphasized the importance of accuracy, with Brantley noting that a key benefit here would be improving that and potentially speeding up play on the field.
In previous seasons, Sony’s Hawk-Eye Technology has been used for refereeing, whether it’s checking or double-checking a call or reviewing footage from optical cameras. Sony put in about 115 for the Super Bowl, compared to about 35-50 for a regular-season game. Brantley noted that it’s “a fundamental piece that’s been there and has been reliable.” It’s something that’s fairly, critically important, because it can help determine whether a call is valid or likely to affect the final score.
While neither would provide specifics, we’ll likely see more Hawk-Eye behind the scenes to speed up calls and potentially measurements like yardage during a game. And while this technology will largely play out behind the scenes, it will come into view during the broadcast, displaying elements like real-time visualizations across the field or even showing up on in-game screens.
Typically, that footage comes from a Sony studio-grade broadcast camera, but the tech giant and the NFL have also flexed some muscle with more unique setups. During the last Super Bowl, for example, Sony deployed its Sony A7R IV camera on the field with a special lens for close-ups, essentially using a different type of camera to get you closer to the action. Manowitz noted that there were 165 cameras deployed to capture the event. He explained that for stills photography — for which Sony has been the exclusive hardware supplier to the Associated Press since 2020 — Sony paired an A7 with a special transmitter to upload and transmit photos faster.
Looking to the future, though, it’s clear that Sony and the NFL also want the partnership to build on new experiences. For example, Disney Plus hosted a “Toy Story Funday Football”-themed version of an NFL game, made possible in large part by Sony’s Beyond Sports technology. Essentially, footage is pulled from multiple cameras and used simultaneously to create a new visual experience. Manowitz summed it up succinctly as “40,000 data points being collected every second and it [Sony Beyond Sports] turns that into a game.”
In this case, he pitched it under the lens of Toy Story , but he shared that “when you think about the next generation of NFL fans, this is their entry point and their learning about the game of football and it’s exciting for them. It also brings the parents and the kids together so they’re both entertained in a totally new way.” On some levels, it’s an impressive technical feat, and it turned out to be Disney Plus’ biggest live event yet. Still, from a technology perspective, it teases a wide range of possibilities for other collaborations in the future.
Still, between working to speed up the game and ensure accuracy, there are a few opportunities for further innovation that Sony’s partnership with the NFL will hopefully yield. What’s one? Well, we do know for sure that Sony will introduce a sideline headset for use by the coaching staff in the 2025 season, which Manowitz says has been in development for years.
