Richard Mille is known for rugged sports watches made with unusual metals, while De Bethune's Denis Flageollet and David Zanetta pioneered the use of silicon and reinvented the balance spring.

WSJ: The Changing Face of Watchmaking

"You've got to be a little crazy, " says 58-year-old Maxine, who gets a thrill out of docking their 58-foot SkipperLiner intercoastal motor yacht while her husband stays below deck and watches news or sports on TV.

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"They're in helmets, watches, bracelets and sports shoes, " he says.

BBC: CES 2013: Ready for the wearable tech revolution

Mr. LEITCH: I - certainly, I - there are, obviously, as any sports fan, any sports fan who watches ESPN on a regular basis.

NPR: In the Era of Sports Scandal, Pity the Fan

Kettmann also takes the reader to Santo Domingo, where Pedro Martinez's former coach watches the action from a sports bar, and to Kwangju, South Korea, where former Sox reliever Byung-Hyun Kim's old high school coach is watching the game at two in the morning.

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Before sports cars and private jets, watches were the ultimate high-tech bauble.

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Banish from your minds the notion, for instance, that when an Australian sports team takes to the field the entire nation watches spellbound wearing green and gold shell-suits.

BBC: Australia: What the rest of the world gets wrong

The information, which can include traffic information, weather, stock quotes, news, sports and dozens of other snippets, would be transmitted to the watches not by any fancy third-generation wireless phone technology, nor via satellite, but rather by FM radio signals using a technology called DirectBand.

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