Internal — Not for Publication
Founder and CEO of SportsMEDIA Technology. Harvard. Edinburgh. The man who put the yellow line on the field. Forty years building technology that the entire sports world depends on — and zero AI, anywhere.
Updated: April 2026 · Target: Head AI Architect · Relationship: Your boss
Gerard Hall did not stumble into sports technology. He invented a category of it. In 1988, as a graduate student, he saw that the gap between what sports data could do and what it was doing on screen was enormous — and he built a company to close it. He started with the PGA Tour and wireless golf scoring. He ended up building the system that tells 100 million Super Bowl viewers where the first-down marker is.
The yellow line is his. Not a metaphor — literally his. SMT developed the virtual first-down line that Fox Sports debuted in 1998 and that has been on every NFL broadcast since. Before that existed, viewers watched referees pace off the chains. After it existed, they couldn't imagine watching without it. That is the level at which he operates: not improving the broadcast, but changing what the broadcast is.
He followed that with the NHL EDGE system — real-time puck and player tracking data embedded in live broadcasts, giving viewers speed, distance, shot power in real time. The NHL Commissioner calls SMT “an essential partner.” That is not marketing language from Gary Bettman. That is a fact.
What Kind of Person This Is
Harvard and Edinburgh. Computer science. Founded a company in 1988 that is still the market leader in 2026. Thirty-eight Emmy Awards. Eighty-five patents. He has been building things at the intersection of technology and live entertainment for forty years — and he has been right about almost all of it.
He does not need to be told AI is coming. He knows. The question is whether anyone around him is ready to move on it — or whether his company is sitting on forty years of sports data, the most powerful client relationships in the industry, and no one with the instinct to connect those assets to what is happening right now.
PGA Tour / NBC wireless golf scoring system. The first product. Nobody had done this. He built it as a graduate student.
The persistent scorebug in the corner of the screen that every broadcast now uses. SMT built the original. It is now industry standard across every sport worldwide.
The virtual first-down line. Fox Sports. Every NFL broadcast since. One of the most recognized graphics in the history of television. His.
Puck and player tracking embedded in live broadcasts. Speed. Distance. Shot power. Real-time. The NHL Commissioner considers it essential infrastructure.
Their core platform. Real-time graphics enriched with statistics, tracking data, predictive analytics, and instant replays. The engine behind everything SMT does for every client.
44 countries. 30,000+ events per year. NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB, NASCAR. Active relationships at the top of every major sport in the world. Zero AI in the public stack.
SMT is a data company. Their entire product — OASIS, the tracking systems, the real-time graphics — is built on turning raw data into something a viewer can understand in real time. That is, by definition, exactly what AI is for. Predictive graphics. Automated highlight generation. Personalized broadcast overlays. AI-generated analysis delivered at broadcast speed. The infrastructure is already there. Nobody at SMT is building on top of it with AI. That is not because the opportunity doesn't exist. It is because the instinct hasn't arrived yet.
The second gap is editorial. SMT has the most valuable relationships in sports broadcasting and no voice to go with them. Their news section is a press release grid. The NHL Commissioner gives them testimonials they have no publication to put those testimonials in. There is no sports technology publication covering the business of broadcast innovation at the level their client list deserves. That outlet does not exist. It is the obvious next thing to build.
The Two Things That Don't Exist
An AI layer on top of OASIS. A publication that serves their clients.
Both of these are worth significantly more than a website redesign. Both of them are things you can build. Neither of them requires Gerard to believe in AI abstractly — they require him to look at something that already works and decide whether he wants his name on it.
He built technology that changed what sports looks like on television — twice, that we know of. The yellow line. The puck tracker. Both of them felt, at the time, like something that did not need to exist. Both of them are now so standard that removing them would feel like a regression.
The AI layer on sports broadcasting is the next version of that story. Not AI as a gimmick — as infrastructure. The system that decides in real time which data point is worth showing. The system that generates a graphic before a producer asks for it. The system that knows, based on the game situation and the viewer data, what the broadcast needs next. That system does not exist yet at scale. The person who builds it — or who positions SMT to build it — is doing what Gerard did with the yellow line.
The publication is the proof of concept. You show up with a working sports technology news operation, already running, already writing at the level his clients read at. Not a pitch deck. A thing that exists. A tandem — you and AI, already in production — that he can see working before he has to decide whether to invest in it.
Lead with the rebuild, close with the paper.
The site redesign is the credential. It shows you can execute at their level over a weekend. But don't let it be the conversation — it's the opening move. The paper is the property. Get to it fast.
He invented things. Speak that language.
Don't pitch AI as a trend. Pitch it as the next version of the yellow line. He has done this before — taken a technology that didn't exist and made it standard. He knows what that feels like. Connect what you're building to that instinct.
Show the tandem.
You and AI working together is not the same as AI running something. That distinction matters to a founder. He built something. He knows what a human fingerprint on a product feels like. Make sure he sees yours on this.
Let the client list do the work.
NHL. NBA. NFL. MLB. NASCAR. Every one of those relationships is already there. The publication serves all of them. You don't have to build an audience — SMT already has one. Point at that.
The ask is a title, not a project.
Head AI Architect. Not a consultant fee. Not a one-off contract. A seat inside the company, with a mandate. If he's interested in the paper, that conversation happens next. If he's interested in the AI layer, that conversation happens next. Either way, the ask is the same.
Do not present this as an AI pitch. AI is the tool. The publication is the product. The title is the ask. Keep the sequence right.
Do not apologize for building it on a weekend. That's the point. Speed is the credential.
Do not underestimate how much he has seen. Harvard. Edinburgh. Forty years. Thirty-eight Emmys. He has heard pitches. Be direct.
Do not make the site rebuild the main event. It is proof of work, not the work.
Do not ask for permission to have built something. You built it. Show it.
He founded a company in 1988 as a graduate student and turned it into the invisible infrastructure that every major sport in the world runs on. He is not looking for someone to explain AI to him. He is looking — whether he knows it yet or not — for someone who has already moved on it. Someone with a working product, a clear instinct, and the nerve to show up with it.
That is you. Show him what you built. He'll know exactly what it is.
— Built April 2026. The weekend before the pitch.
ITETHERED — Confidential