Sports Scorebooks Slowly Moving to Online Scoring

Some may recall that one of the reasons cited for the use of computers in business, education and our personal lives was that doing so would save paper. “Paper-free by the 21st century” was quoted in promotion and futuristic views.

In reality, paper use increased due to computers, along with their companion, the printer, and has only started to decline in recent years with movement to online distribution and sharing of information as well as the storage and updating of data. More often than not, people actually keep a paper version of important documents that are available electronically, even having multiple copies when multiple parties are involved.

The truth is we are reluctant to give up the comfort, familiarity and security that paper provides, still not fully trusting the invisible storage that computers have, inboard or online, to keep our precious information.

One area that is slowly moving toward an online version is the scoring of sporting events. All that one can do with a scorebook and a pencil in recording the outs, hits and runs of baseball or plays, downs and touchdowns in football can be done using a computer or other device. Using either a computer-based app or an Internet connection to the same platform in the Cloud, the details of a game can be entered, stored, retrieved and presented in multiple ways.

However, unlike the paper version, the entry of that information can then be organized into a variety of ways including team stats, player stats, trends and other season or series analysis. If stored online in some version, some or all of that information becomes shareable. Such access to data can provide coaches, players and supporters with a broad spectrum of information that they can use for practice, game plans, improvement and decision-making.

Baseball and football are not the only sports that have access to this type of technology. A quick search pulls up products that provide game scoring and stats for softball, lacrosse, volleyball, basketball, soccer, lacrosse and others. With any technology, there are multiple approaches to how the user interacts with the platform, how the platform is accessed, what response the user receives from data entry, how the information appears during live data entry and how it can be shared post contest.

In addition, users can connect the scorebook with live streaming and video recording, which allows the data to be entered by the scorer and displayed as part of the video feed. Others offer ways to share selected video such as highlights as part of the live feed or stored as recordings for review later in preparation for practice or the next game.

Access to an online platform can be done through a myriad of devices with the most common being a tablet, offering the ease of a smartphone with a larger screen for better viewing and data entry. Most often connecting through WiFi, some offer the option of doing so through cellular data, providing the user with more mobility in where they are when scoring the game. As part of considering a platform, identifying how you wish to use it and where you wish to use it can be as important as the choices in what data is stored and how it is displayed and shared. Having an online scorebook that you can only access on your desktop computer would defeat the point of being able to enter the data in real time.

A reluctance to fully trust information to the Cloud will surely be evident in users of this type of software also having someone continue to score the game on paper in a standard scorebook. Doing so does not reduce the viability of the online data, but allows it to then be used more in the post-contest data analysis and storage of statistics for teams and players.

Some leagues may require all teams to use a specific platform so that the data is not only consistent, but also can be used for team-to-team comparisons, league statistics and standings. Sharing of such communal data would also be a function of a shared or common platform. If the platform also includes some type of video recording or feed, that could be shared as well, allowing coaches the opportunity to prepare their teams for the next opponent.

There are also several versions of online paper forms where the data is entered in editable documents that often fully resemble the paper scorebooks. That data can then be stored, shared and printed, and in some versions, used for statistics and further considerations. Whichever way you go, entering data into any online scoring platform will allow use of that data in more ways than the paper-only version, enhancing both the coverage of the sport and the improvements players can make in their preparations for the next competition.