A University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill grad and employee at Sports Media Technology (SMT), based in Durham, uses biometric data to display fan excitement at the Winter Olympics.
Story by Lauren Schutter, Video by Avery Bales, UNC-CH, WRAL News
MILAN, ITALY- On the surface, it’s the kind of broadcast moment you can miss if you blink: a small graphic tucked near the corner of the screen, a number climbing fast, a pulse you can almost feel through the TV.
But inside that number is the story of the Olympics — not just the athlete who trained for years to skate, slide or jump under the brightest lights, but the people who helped them get there. The parents holding their breath in the stands. The coach living and dying on every split-second decision. The sibling watching someone they’ve known forever suddenly become a global name.
That’s where Jackson Jones comes in.
A University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill grad and employee at Sports Media Technology (SMT), Jones is in Milan for the Olympics, helping power a biometric initiative that brings fans closer to the most human part of sport: emotion.
SMT, based in Durham, works behind the scenes across some of the biggest stages in sports — from major television broadcasts like the Super Bowl and NASCAR races to horse racing and league-level data systems. Jones describes the company as providing “data services, software development and hardware solutions for major television network sports broadcasters and sports leagues,” supporting everything from enhanced graphics and statistics integration to real-time tracking across events.
“We’re kind of focused on two main areas,” Jones said. “We support TV broadcasts: enhanced graphics, data integration, producer services … and we also provide data for different leagues.”
That “data” can mean an entire ecosystem: timing feeds, tracking devices, tags on athletes in certain sports, and systems that translate raw numbers into clean, readable information that viewers trust. In the Olympics environment, where every hundredth of a second matters and every graphic needs to match the moment perfectly, that translation has to be seamless.
One major part of SMT’s Olympic footprint is interface data — taking official timing and results and converting them into broadcast-ready elements.
Jones explained that SMT’s team connects to Omega Timing, the Olympics’ official timing provider, then routes that information through software tools so it can appear in the specific formats that NBC Sports requests. From there, SMT’s developers code the data to match graphics packages that appear across multiple venues and sports.
Their Olympic operation is split between the International Broadcast Centre and remote production support in the United States, with staff working out of Samford, Conn.
Monitoring fans’ Olympic excitement
But Jones’ personal assignment in Milan is different and, in many ways, more intimate.
e leads a broadcast initiative called “biometrics,” which relies on 27 heart-rate kits positioned across select Olympic venues, including curling, figure skating, aerials and moguls, snowpark and alpine skiing. The heart-rate monitors aren’t for athletes — they’re for the people watching them.
“These are on spectators,” Jones said. The kits use a wristwatch-style monitor that connects to an Android phone via Bluctooth, transmitting heart rate data every second to a cloud server over cellular networks. Graphics machines in Samford then pull that data down so producers can display it live during NBC’s broadcast.
Before leaving North Carolina, Jones said he ran full checks on all 27 kits in Durham to make sure each one connected properly, transmitted reliably, and would hold up internationally.
Jones also worked with NBC Sports to design updated graphics looks and adjust software based on lessons learned from the Paris Olympics, where the program existed on a much smaller scale. In Paris, the biometric effort used only five kits. Milan’s rollout is more than just an upgrade. It’s a Olympic leap.