As the countdown at the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4th reached zero, Joey Chestnut appeared to be in the lead with “only” 64 hot dogs consumed in 10 minutes. Carmen Cincotti trailed with 45. A quick review, however, determined a counting error: Chestnut had actually eaten a world record 74 hot dogs, and Cincotti had downed 64.
The order of finish at Coney Island didn’t change, and the error was remedied quickly. Still, the brief confusion was enough to make Major League Eating president Rich Shea muse about applying advanced technology to his low-tech sport.
“I don’t want to take anything away from the judges—I’ve seen bad calls in the Super Bowl—but we should explore, I guess, opportunities with someone like an Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers, or IBM Watson AI,” Shea said.
Shea acknowledges that he’s out of his expertise when discussing tech options. “I doubt we can put the microchip on the tongue or in the esophagus,” he told ESPN. (Well, yeah.) In an interview with SportTechie, he added, “And obviously you’re not going to put chips on the hot dogs.”
Mid-event replay is impractical because pausing the competition undermines the speed element of the contest, but a postgame review is possible. So too is a weight-based solution, as MLE already uses for “debris foods” like wings, crawfish, or ribs—the items are placed on a scale before and after consumption to determine how much was actually eaten.
Similarly, Shea wonders if there could be a lesson from hotel room mini-bars, of all places.
“Some of them are just regular fridges, and some of them have a magnet or chip, so if you pull out a soda, you get charged,” he said. “Maybe there’s a way—I don’t know. This is honestly a conversation for someone else because I am not in this world. I’m more of a promoter and a publicist.”
Indeed, Shea said that MLE is certainly known for its ballyhoo and fun with, at times, a “hyperbolic delivery.” He then proceeded to call the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest “our Masters” but stressed that all events, even “a one-off, you-name-the-food contest in a small town in Iowa” all have competitive integrity.
“If we do introduce technology, it can’t interrupt the sanctity of the Fourth of July hot dog eating contest, which is an American treasure, and really we want to disrupt it as little as we can,” he said.
A conversation with Shea is littered with all kinds of tech buzzwords. He likened Chestnut’s record-setting abilities and machine-like performance to “algorithmic trading in blockchain.” He said there might be use for something comparable to the World Cup’s goal-line technology. The first row of eating competitions is called the spray zone, so he invoked the term “spray-zone technology.” (He first proposed that eight years ago in a conversation with Deadspin.) Or, now, the new soccer tech aid, Video Assistant Referees.
“We do need spray-zone technology, and we have to look at all options,” Shea said. “I’m not conversant in VAR, AI, or [maybe we] just need a PwC type of group that must have standards set where they can improve our situation.”
There was no crisis on Coney Island, but the brief flub was enough to make Shea start asking questions and seeking information.
“From a sports presentation, I’d have liked it to be cleaner. We’re not thrilled with the fact that this miscount happened, but it’s not controversial,” he said, before later adding: “We live in a technology-rich time, and perhaps there’s an application here. Or perhaps there’s not, you know?”