Legends Behind the Lens: Stan Honey The Neil Armstrong of sports television changed on-screen graphics forever By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Thursday, July 9, 2020 - 12:00 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The story of American sports television is engrained in the history of this nation, rising on the achievements of countless incredible men and women who never once appeared on our screens. During this pause in live sports, SVG is proud to present a celebration of this great industry. Legends Behind the Lens is a look at how we got here seen through the people who willed it to be. Each weekday, we will share with you the story of a person whose impact on the sports-television industry is indelible.
Legends Behind the Lens is presented in association with the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the SVG Sports Broadcasting Fund. In these trying times - with so many video-production professionals out of work - we hope that you will consider (if you are able) donating to the Sports Broadcasting Fund. Do so by visiting sportsbroadcastfund.org.
___________________________
By Jason Dachman
The 1st & Ten line on football telecasts. K-Zone and pitch-tracking on baseball. Car-tracking pointer graphics on NASCAR. LiveLine course markers on the America's Cup. And anything dubbed augmented reality on sports TV. Today, these elements are fixtures that fans have come to expect in live sports telecasts, but none of the technologies would exist had it not been for Stan Honey. The master innovator and co-founder of Sportvision has helped change the way fans watch sports, creating unique augmented-reality tools that illuminate hard-to-see moments and allow the production team to better tell the story playing out on the field.
Every time we've created a successful system, it has taken something that is hard to see, important to the game, and occurs often, and then we superimposed a graphic to make it easy to see, he explains. We want to make it easier to see and understand those invisible but important and frequent moments.
Of course, Honey's achievements go well beyond the realm of sports media. He is one of the most decorated navigators in sailing and, early in his career, pioneered the first-ever vehicle-navigation system.
Stan Honey's influence and legacy in the sports-broadcasting industry is absolutely immense, says Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer and Fox Sports founding President David Hill. What Stan has done - from the glowing puck to the 1st & 10 line to tracking NASCAR [stock cars] in a three-dimensional space - has totally changed the viewer experience. Stan's inventive, curious mind has left an indelible legacy on sports production - both in the U.S. and around the world.
From Navigator and Innovator to the Father of Vehicle Navigation
The son and godson of navigators, Honey was born in Pasadena, CA, in 1955, and grew up in San Marino sailing dinghies, as well as showing an early passion for engineering by constructing homemade ham radios. By the time he was a teenager, he was navigating large yachts in races ranging from Mexico to Hawaii.
He opted to attend Yale for his undergraduate degree - largely because it had the best sailing team in the country - and earned a BS in engineering and applied science. While helping Yale continue to dominate the sport, Honey also began to sail professionally and quickly developed a reputation as one of the most gifted navigators around.
After graduating, he began work as a research engineer at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), continuing to sail and navigate professionally as well as earning his MSEE at Stanford. During this period, renowned entrepreneur - and ATARI founder - Nolan Bushnell tapped him to navigate his maxi yacht in the 1983 Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu, a race in which he was first to finish. With Bushnell's backing and encouragement, Honey founded Etak (a Polynesian navigational term), which would pioneer the first car-navigation system using map-matching technology (once GPS became available, all vehicle navigation systems continued to use the map-matching tech created by ETAK in conjunction with GPS).
I think Stan embodies the ultimate marriage between technical innovation and content awareness. And he is the perfect harmony between curiosity and wisdom, says Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer and frequent collaborator Geoffrey Mason. The reason he's so successful at whatever he does is, he makes sure he understands the needs of his colleagues. That has been true whether in his early days as [vehicle-navigation] innovator, as a navigator in sailing, or creating animations to illustrate the action in an America's Cup race.
Honey's News Corp. Era Begins
In 1989, Honey sold Etak to Rupert Murdoch for roughly $35 million and continued to run it under News Corp. ownership. He also found his way into the media business.
One of the advantages I had going to a liberal-arts school like Yale for an engineering education was that I also learned to speak and write pretty well, says Honey. So the executives [at News Corp.] realized that, even though I was an engineer, I could also explain technology in a way they could understand. At the time, there were a lot of confusing new technologies and terms in the media industry: encryption, digital, internet, conditional access. I ended up spending half my time helping the other chief executives tangling with these technical issues.
When News Corp. sold Etak to Sony in 1996, Honey stayed on as News Corp.'s EVP of technology, a role he says he struggled with since I enjoy building things and a corporate role like that was really frustrating because I wasn't building anything.
Nonetheless, he took on several major projects during his six years in the role, including managing
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
06/12/2025
In a live broadcast from the Reagan National Defense Forum, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher Kubasik joined Morgan Brennan on CNBCs Closing Bell: Overtime. Ku...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
Every year, Spotify Wrapped offers a personalized look back at the audio that defined your year. It's a snapshot of your listening habits, designed to tell ...
05/12/2025
In 2025, Spotify's EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs celebrated women, LGBTQIA , and emerging artists who turned moments into milestones. From breaking record...
05/12/2025
In our latest blog, we explain how Wi-Fi 7 rollouts can drive consumer loyalty with value-add services such as consumer cybersecurity. We also explore how this ...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils the First Look for Land of Sin' - Premier...
05/12/2025
Introducing New Perks to Help You Get Even More from LinkedIn Premium Published on Dec 5, 2025 Categories: Company News, Product News
LinkedIn Corporate Co...
05/12/2025
Friday 5 December 2025
A new Game of Thrones Tale: Official trailer for Sky Exc...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
05/12/2025
Tis the season of giving once again and this year we've taken our Give Back Fridays' concept and turned it on its head.
In the autumn we were approach...
05/12/2025
Brayden Gogis doesn't remember a time when he wasn't completely fixated on games in all forms. In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we ...
05/12/2025
The Grinch steals the spotlight as the theme for The Late Late Toy Show 2025
Tune in tonight at 9:35pm on RT One and worldwide on RT Player
#LateLateToyShow...
05/12/2025
RT Announces New Presenters of Flagship News Programmes
New RT Six One News co-presenter Tommy Meskill
Sarah McInerney & Justin McCarthy join Morning Ir...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
Legends Behind the Lens: Stan Honey The Neil Armstrong of sports television changed on-screen graphics forever By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
