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50 free Technology in Sports trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This technology in sports trivia quiz covers the devices and systems that decide modern games: Hawk-Eye's cameras in tennis and cricket, VAR and goal-line technology in football, the Decision Review System with Hot Spot and Snickometer, photo-finish strip cameras and fully automatic timing in athletics, electronic scoring in fencing, the shot clock in basketball, instant replay on television, the pitch clock and Statcast in baseball, and the sensor-equipped Al Rihla ball from the 2022 World Cup. It also takes in equipment breakthroughs that forced rule changes: Speedo's LZR Racer swimsuit and Nike's carbon-plated Vaporfly. The easy questions ask which sport uses DRS, what VAR stands for, and which company times the Olympics. The harder ones ask who invented Hawk-Eye and where, how many cameras GoalControl used at the 2014 World Cup, who invented instant replay and at which game, what the FIFA goal-line rule says about confirming a goal within one second, and which year the NBA adopted the 24-second clock. It suits physical education classes studying sports technology as much as pub quiz teams; our sports trivia quiz is the broader page. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry for the technology before publishing, and the sentence that supports it is stored with each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who originally developed the Hawk-Eye ball-tracking system in the United Kingdom?
Paul Hawkins
Engineers at Roke Manor Research in Romsey built it in 2000; Sony bought the company in 2011.
Q 02Hawk-Eye was first used on television in 2001 to analyse which cricket decision?
Leg before wicket
It triangulates feeds from up to ten high-speed cameras into a 3D path of the ball.
Q 03To within how many millimetres is Hawk-Eye advertised to be accurate?
2.6 mm
Even so, its makers describe it as not infallible.
Q 04Which company bought Hawk-Eye Innovations in March 2011?
Sony
The deal valued the firm at £15m to £20m.
Q 05Which Grand Slam first used Hawk-Eye officially for player challenges, in 2006?
US Open
Each player received two challenges per set; the Australian Open followed in 2007.
Q 06Which 2021 Grand Slam was the first to use Hawk-Eye Live for all matches, with no line judges?
Australian Open
The move was partly to cut personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic; the US Open followed that year.
Q 07What does VAR stand for in football?
Video assistant referee
The official works under the philosophy of 'minimal interference, maximum benefit'.
Q 08In which year did IFAB formally write VAR into the Laws of the Game?
2018
It made its global debut at the 2018 World Cup in Russia months later.
Q 09VAR's first use in an official match was a 2016 cup tie involving which Dutch club?
Ajax
The opponents were Willem II, on September 21, 2016.
Q 10How many categories of decision can VAR review?
Four
Goals, penalties, direct red cards and mistaken identity; only 'clear and obvious errors' get overturned.
Q 11Where does the English Premier League station its VAR teams?
Stockley Park
Germany's federation runs its video operation room in Cologne-Deutz.
Q 12Whose disallowed goal at the 2010 World Cup pushed FIFA to reopen the goal-line debate?
Frank Lampard
His shot against Germany bounced down off the bar and clearly over the line.
Q 13In which year did IFAB officially approve goal-line technology?
2012
The Laws were amended in July to permit, but not require, its use.
Q 14How many high-speed cameras did the GoalControl system use at the 2014 World Cup?
Q 21In cricket, what does DRS stand for?
Decision Review System
Players can request a review by the third umpire; on-field umpires have been able to refer decisions since 1992.
Q 22The cricket Player Referral system was first tested in 2008 in a match between India and which team?
Sri Lanka
The ICC officially launched it in November 2009 during New Zealand v Pakistan in Dunedin.
Q 23Hot Spot in cricket relies on which kind of camera?
Infrared
Two cameras at either end of the ground pick up the heat left where the ball strikes bat or pad.
14
It had been trialled at the 2013 Confederations Cup; Ligue 1 later dropped it for Hawk-Eye after errors.
Q 15Who scored the first Premier League goal decisively awarded by goal-line technology?
Edin Džeko
It came for Manchester City against Cardiff City on January 18, 2014.
Q 16Which system, based on magnetic fields and a sensor in the ball, was tested in Denmark in 2012?
GoalRef
It was tested in Danish Superliga matches in the first half of the year.
Q 17Which World Cup was the first men's tournament to use semi-automated offside technology?
2022 Qatar
It combines player-tracking cameras, computer-generated lines and a sensor inside the ball.
Q 18How many data points per player did the offside cameras track at the 2022 World Cup?
29
They were tracked 50 times per second, including limbs relevant to offside calls.
Q 19What was the name of the sensor-equipped Adidas ball used at the 2022 World Cup?
Al Rihla
Its motion sensor tracked every touch 500 times per second and fed data to the VAR team.
Q 20The Telstar, first World Cup ball shaped as a truncated icosahedron, debuted at which tournament?
1970 Mexico
Its 12 black pentagons and 20 white hexagons became the standard image of a football.
Q 24Which English computer scientist invented the Snickometer in the mid-1990s?
Allan Plaskett
It pairs a frame-by-frame replay with the waveform from a microphone near the stumps.
Q 25The oldest known single-exposure racetrack photo-finish images were made in which year?
1890
They were taken by John Charles Hemment; modern strip cameras arrived in the 1940s and 1950s.
Q 26Photo-finish cameras typically use which photographic technique?
Strip photography
The camera records only the finish line, so the horizontal axis of the image represents time rather than space.
Q 27Which watchmaker has been the official Olympic timekeeper since 1932?
Omega
Its 1952 Time Recorder was the first to use a quartz clock and print results.
Q 28Jim Hines's 1968 Olympic 100 m was first measured by automatic timing at what time?
9.89
Early systems had a built-in start delay, so the figure was later adjusted upward.
Q 29Swimsuit drag was cut by what percentage by Speedo's LZR Racer versus its predecessor?
24%
NASA wind-tunnel testing supported the design, and 94% of Beijing 2008 races were won in the suit.
Q 30How many of the 25 swimming world records set at Beijing 2008 were swum in the LZR Racer?
23
FINA's 2009 rule change made such polyurethane suits ineligible from January 1, 2010.