AI Summary
5 min readIn the final week of the 2024–25 Scottish Premiership season, Hearts fans believed their team was about to win the league for the first time in 40 years. Hearts had led the table for 250 consecutive days. Then, deep into injury time in Celtic’s match against Motherwell, the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) intervened. A long throw into the box, a headed clearance, a Celtic player going down holding his face—the on-field referee played on. But VAR officials spotted a handball. A penalty was awarded. Celtic scored, won the game, and went on to claim the title. For Hearts fan Alistair Laurie, the call was inconclusive even after multiple replays. “If it had been a handball, you would have admitted it,” he said. “There would be nowhere near an amount of fury.” The technology meant to make the game fairer had, in his view, stolen a season’s worth of hope.
How VAR went from broadcast tool to game-defining force
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:31) **The Hearts Fan's Heartbreak: A VAR Controversy** - Alistair Laurie recounts his lifelong fandom of Heart of Midlothian and the 2024-25 season where they led the Scottish league for 250 days.
- 2 (06:17) **The Rise of VAR: From Broadcast Tool to Controversial Referee** - The episode explains how VAR originated as a broadcast enhancement before reshaping officiating.
- 3 (10:34) **Data's New Frontier: Cartoon Avatars and Personalized Viewing** - Hawkeye now uses skeletal tracking to generate two million data points per football match, enabling new fan experiences.
- 4 (14:31) **Global Lessons: Three-Minute Dramas and Integrated Shopping** - New consumption formats in China are reshaping how sports are packaged for younger audiences.
- 5 (15:51) **The Gambling Transformation: In-Play Betting and Micro-Betting** - The episode pivots to gambling as the most profound tech-driven change in sports fandom.
- 6 (17:44) **How Data Feeds the Betting Machine** - Real-time data from companies like Hawkeye is sold to bookmakers, carving games into hundreds of micro-markets.
- 7 (20:18) **The New Fan Vocabulary: From Heat Maps to XG** - The influx of data is changing how fans talk about and experience sport.
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Show Notes
Video-assistant refereeing (VAR) has proved to be one of the most controversial pieces of technology ever introduced in sports. But with the rise of everything from broadcasting gimmicks to data-driven gambling, it’s far from the only technology changing what it means to be a fan. The FT’s sports editor Josh Noble asks whether these advancements are making sport more fun to watch, or overshadowing the event itself.
This season of Tech Tonic is hosted by Josh Noble and produced by Josh Gabert-Doyon. The senior producer is Edwin Lane and the executive producer is Topher Forhecz. Sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco. Original music by Metaphor Music. The FT’s head of audio is Flo Phillips. Special thanks to David Sheppard and Florian Müller.
Clips: Wimbledon, BBC SPFL, Sky, TNT
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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