Technology in Sports Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
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 01Which British inventor built the ball-tracking system that brought line-call challenges to tennis?
Paul Hawkins
Paul Hawkins built it at Roke Manor Research to enhance television coverage of cricket, and only later did tennis adopt it for line-call challenges.
Q 02Hawk-Eye was first used on television in 2001 to analyse which cricket decision?
Leg before wicket
Leg before wicket: Channel 4's coverage showed viewers where the ball would have gone had the batsman's pad not been in the way, and umpires later got the same tool for reviews.
Q 03What colour is the virtual first-down line that TV viewers have seen on American football broadcasts since 1998?
Yellow
Yellow: the line exists only on screen, drawn so that players appear to run over it as if it were painted on the grass.
Q 04Which company bought Hawk-Eye Innovations in March 2011?
Sony
Sony bought the firm from investors led by the Wisden Group, the cricket publisher that had taken it over in 2006, after it was put up for sale.
Q 05Which Grand Slam first used Hawk-Eye officially for player challenges, in 2006?
US Open
US Open: the push came from its own 2004 quarter-final, where television replays showed several wrong line calls against Serena Williams in her loss to Jennifer Capriati.
Q 06Which 2021 Grand Slam was the first to use Hawk-Eye Live for all matches, with no line judges?
Australian Open
Australian Open: with staff cut during the pandemic, every court was called by machine, and the recorded 'out' calls were voiced by key workers as a tribute.
Q 07What does VAR stand for in football?
Video assistant referee
Video assistant referee: despite the title, the official only advises from a bank of screens, and the referee on the pitch always makes the final decision.
Q 08Which country hosted the first World Cup to use VAR?
Russia
Russia: at the 2018 finals a referee first waved play on, then gave France a penalty against Australia after a call from the VAR, and Antoine Griezmann scored it.
Q 09A 2016 Dutch cup tie between Willem II and which club gave VAR its first top-level competitive test?
Ajax
Ajax won 5–0, and the test proved its worth when the VAR had a Willem II midfielder sent off after the referee first showed only a yellow card.
Q 10VAR's 2018 protocol let it review which cards?
Direct reds
Direct reds: a second yellow card was left to the referee alone, in keeping with the protocol's aim of interfering with the game as little as possible.
Q 11Where does the English Premier League station its VAR teams?
Stockley Park
Stockley Park: the VAR hub sits on a west London business park, so the VAR can be hundreds of miles from the pitch being judged.
Q 12Whose disallowed goal at the 2010 World Cup pushed FIFA to reopen the goal-line debate?
Frank Lampard
Frank Lampard's shot in the last-16 tie hit the underside of the bar and bounced well over the line, yet the officials missed it and England went out, beaten 4–1.
Q 13Who reopened football's goal-line technology debate in 2010?
Sepp Blatter
Sepp Blatter had long resisted it, and football's lawmakers voted in March 2010 to drop the idea for good; a wrongly disallowed England goal that summer changed his mind.
Q 21In cricket, what does DRS stand for?
Decision Review System
Decision Review System: a captain or batter asks for a review by making a 'T' with the arms, and each side is allowed only a few failed challenges per innings.
Q 22The cricket Player Referral system was first tested in 2008 in a match between India and which team?
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka hosted India for the trial, and their batsman Tillakaratne Dilshan, given out by the umpire, appealed to the TV official and was reprieved.
Q 23Hot Spot in cricket relies on which kind of camera?
Infrared
Infrared: friction from even a faint edge warms the bat for an instant, and the cameras show that as a bright white spot.
Q 14GoalControl, the camera system that judged goals at the 2014 World Cup, came from which country?
Germany
Germany: GoalControl's cameras gave the World Cup its first goal by technology when a Benzema shot hit the post and crossed the line off the Honduras goalkeeper.
Q 15Who scored the first Premier League goal decisively awarded by goal-line technology?
Edin Džeko
Edin Džeko miscued his shot for Manchester City and a Cardiff defender thought he had cleared it, but the technology told the referee it had already crossed the line.
Q 16Fox's FoxTrax system, launched in 1996, made which object glow on television?
A hockey puck
A hockey puck: electronics inside it let Fox paint a blue glow around it on screen, with a trail to show how hard a shot had been hit.
Q 17Which country hosted the first men's World Cup to use semi-automated offside technology?
Qatar
Qatar: twelve tracking cameras under each stadium roof followed 29 points on every player, though a video official still had to confirm each call.
Q 18Which motorsport made the titanium 'halo' head guard compulsory on its cars in 2018?
Formula One
Formula One: the bar over the cockpit was credited with saving Romain Grosjean in 2020, when his car split a barrier in Bahrain and burst into flames.
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 20Which country hosted the first World Cup played with Adidas's black-and-white Telstar ball?
Mexico
Mexico: the 1970 finals were broadcast live around the world, and the Telstar's black panels helped it show up on black-and-white television sets.
Q 24The Snickometer detects a faint edge by pairing replays with what?
Stump microphone audio
Stump microphone audio: a faint edge shows as a spike in the sound wave at the instant the ball passes the bat; Allan Plaskett devised it in the 1990s.
Q 25After a disputed 1960 Olympic 100 m freestyle final, what did swimming install at the end of each lane?
Touchpads
Touchpads: the stopwatches had Lance Larson ahead, yet the judges gave gold to John Devitt, and the row led to pads that swimmers stop themselves.
Q 26A photo-finish camera records only what?
The line itself
The line itself: the camera scans one thin slice at the finish over and over, so reading across the picture you are looking at time, not distance.
Q 27Which watchmaker first served as official Olympic timekeeper at the 1932 Los Angeles Games?
Omega
Omega took the job in 1932 and has held it at most Games since, though Seiko's quartz clocks timed the Tokyo Olympics of 1964.
Q 28Who ran the first electronically timed 100 metres under ten seconds, at the 1968 Olympics?
Jim Hines
Jim Hines saw 9.89 flash up from a light beam on the line, but the official photo-finish gave 9.95, a world record that lasted until 1983.
Q 29Which agency's wind-tunnel experts helped Speedo test fabrics for its LZR Racer swimsuit?
NASA
NASA: Speedo approached its drag researchers after the 2004 Olympics, despite jokes that swimwear 'isn't rocket science', and the finished suit rewrote the record books in 2008.
Q 30In the NFL, what colour flag does a head coach throw to challenge a ruling on the field?
Red
Red: the challenge system arrived in 1999, and a coach may only throw the flag while his team still has a timeout left to stake on it.