History

The development of the scientific discipline of sports informatics, which according to Link and Lames (2018) can be understood as multi- and interdisciplinary research programs that contain both informatics and sports science components, is traced with regard to its institutionalization. Four phases are distinguished: The pre-institutional phase (until 1995), the phase of the dvs section “Sport Informatics” (1995–2003), the phase of IACSS (International Association of Computer Science in Sports; 2003–2019), and the phase of institutional integration of informatics working groups (from 2019). As a conclusion, it is noted that a naive position on the challenges of interdisciplinary science should be avoided. To this end, it is suggested to form project groups in which both computer scientists and sports scientists are represented.