Yes, the Big Bang Referee is getting a follow-up
Hublot is set to launch another smartwatch and like its first, it’s going to be a tie-in with a major football tournament.
Speaking in an interview with Fortune India, Hublot’s CEO Ricardo Guadalupe confirmed that the Swiss watchmaker will be going connected again for the UEFA European Football Championships, which takes place across twelve venues across Europe between 2 June and the 12 July.
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“We brought out a smartwatch during the football world cup in Russia in 2018 and will be launching a new smartwatch next year during the Euro Cup,” confirmed Guadalupe.
Guadalupe didn’t get into any specifics about what we can expect from its next smartwatch, though we imagine it’ll be very similar to the ridiculously named Big Bang Referee 2018 Fifa World Cup Russia smartwatch it launched back in 2018 months before the action kicked off.
Hublot launched its first smartwatch in 2018 that was worn by referees at the World Cup finals in Russia
The World Cup watch was worn by referees during the tournament while Hublot also made a limited 2,018 pieces available for the princely sum of 5,000 francs (around £3,700) if you wanted one too.
It ran on Google’s Wear OS to offer that core smartwatch experience along with some extras for the refs to keep track of games. There was also a handy interactive watch face that notified you about action from all of the games as they were taking place in real time.
We managed to get the big, expensive Wear smartwatch in to try out during the World Cup and it offered a familiar experience in a watch design that it’s fair to say was an acquired taste.
It was suggested that its first smartwatch would be a one-off, though clearly Hublot thinks there’s a place for a connected timepiece in its bold watch collection. “We believe Hublot has to invest in new technologies and that there is a space for luxury smartwatches, he said. “We won’t produce smartwatches en masse like Apple but will do a select few and price them at a premium.”
There’s no details when the Hublot Euro 2020 smartwatch will drop or whether it’ll have a similarly long name as the first Hublot smartwatch. The Big Bang Referee was shown off at the Baselworld watch fair in March 2018, before being made available a couple of months later.
We think it’s safe to assume that Hublot will have similar plans for its next watch and it’ll be another expensive (and limited) one to get hold of.