What Do Sports and Art Auctions Have in Common?

By Devang Thakkar, Head of Auctions, Artsy

What do a Sotheby’s auction and a soccer match have in common? Anticipation, excitement, disappointment — adrenaline runs high. As a big soccer fan, my experience as a sports spectator has evolved with the proliferation of technology. Technology is used to augment and enhance the physical experience of watching sports through contextual, real-time data and commentary. As an amateur artist, I’ve been an art lover for many years. I’ve also been fascinated by the commercial side of the art world, in particular, the live auction experience. I thought: Why can’t we make auction watching and bidding as engaging and exciting as seeing your favorite player score a game-winning goal?

I joined the company after a more than 10-year tenure at Microsoft, and my team’s first major initiative was to build a product to host Artsy’s live auctions. You can read more about how we built live auction integration in a post I wrote last year. Recently, I was able to share more about the philosophy behind the product at the Product Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York: