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Last year’s Super Bowl in Los Angeles was missing something most viewers didn’t realize was gone. It’s something that’s been to every Super Bowl since the first one in 1967.

Former Rochester resident and Kodak executive Richard Mackson is largely responsible. He has created a picture distribution system that allows photos to be sent directly from the sideline almost anywhere around the world. The NFL employed the system for the first time at Super Bowl 56 in L.A.

Equipment installed inside a stadium works with the facility wifi and enables photographers to connect with the internet for sending. Mackson compares the system to hooking a giant Ethernet cable into each camera on a sideline.

The result is similar to posting pictures on social media from your phone, but with much more professional quality and way better connectivity.

“Most of the agencies edited off-site which has never been done before (at a Super Bowl),” Mackson said.

Professional photographers like Mackson — a 45-year Sports Illustrated veteran — rely on editors to clean up and post their work. His technology updates a process that is decades old.

“You’d be out shooting on the sideline. You’d have somebody come out. Get your cards out of the camera. Take them back to the editing room and you’d have to edit on-site. It was really no different than having to take a roll of film back to the back room and process the film,” Mackson says. “This gives you the ability to have distributed editing, which is an advantage because you don’t have to fly somebody to the game or get a local person to be there.”

Mackson’s daughter Lauren is a sports photography veteran herself who often can help edit her father’s work from Greece. Not Greece, New York either. Athens, Greece.

“The technology has gotten to the point now where you can feel confident that you can do it,” Mackson says.

While the idea for such a system has existed for well over a decade, the computer power and bandwidth for moving such large files took a while to catch up. It seems like that wait is over.

Among pro and college teams from basketball, baseball and the NFL, Mackson says he has ten systems up and running in various stadiums.

With plenty more interest on the way.

“The old days of bringing editors (to sports events) may be over.”

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