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NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is confirmed that new, league-wide puck- and player-tracking systems will be ready for the 2019 -2 020 season and accepted, for the first time, that the NHL will have possession of the technology.
The NHL initially commissioned development of the tracking technology to be used as a broadcast and follower engagement tool, with an early exam at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. The Supreme court decision that paved the behavior for legalization of athletics betting has created an additional use for information systems. This new advanced data source connection is the centerpiece of the NHL’s gambling partnership with MGM Resorts.
“We will own information and communication technologies that we’re using, ” Bettman said Monday, adding: “We’ve had to build some direct investments to get the type of technology we think we need and to make it work.”
David Lehanski, NHL senior vice president of business development and global partnerships, told Sports Business Journal in October 2017 that the league was speaking with one or two tech dealers. Bettman told reporters at the Board of Governors gratifies last-place December that the tournament was “working with some technology companies” on development projects. Those public statements made clear that the NHL was not developing the whole system internally, but the question of owned had not previously been addressed.
League executives have indicated that there actually is likely to be two discrete tracking technologies: one for the players and one for the pucks. A computer vision-based visual structure will record player moves, and a sensor-based technology will monitor the puck. This proprietary tech will be delivered sports books, such as MGM, advanced the data used in real-time to help create prop wagers and determine cables. This is creating a brand-new revenue stream for the NHL for an off-label use of radio broadcasts tool.
“It wasn’t designed for this–it’s applicable, but that wasn’t what our purpose was, ” Bettman said.
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Details, to date, have been scarce. When showing at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference last February, Bettman identified the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany as having worked on a brand-new puck. The commissioner said the research group had re-invented the physical complexes of the hockey puck to permit an embedded sensor while continuing to behaving and moving like a traditional puck.
No other marketers have been explicitly related, although there are likely nominees. Sportvision–now SMT–provides the league’s official real-time scoring system, HITS( Hockey Information& Tracking System ), and were involved in these 2016 World cup finals of Hockey. That system, however, relied on transmitters sewed into each jersey and infrared cameras to line specific actions. Omega provided a similar structure for hockey at the 2018 Winter Olympics, but that also involved tracking chips. The NHL has said musicians will not wear sensors in the new system.
“While we’ve tested it in some forms at the World Cup, that was 16 games in 2 week in one realm, ” Bettman said. “Having to scale this for 1,271 regular season plays in 31 arenas is a little bit harder.”
Sportlogiq and Iceberg are among the other visual tracking systems that have worked with individual NHL crews, and PlayGineering Systems has worked with several teams, conferences, and tournaments overseas, including the Kontinental Hockey League. ChyronHego, STATS SportVU, and Second Spectrum are some of the leading systems in use for other sports. Kinexon and Zebra are prominent corporations that shape tracking sensors used throughout this NBA and NFL, respectively, and could conceivably contribute engineering for the puck.
The above index is a roundup of resulting tech companies who may have helped lend a foundational fragment for the NHL to invest and build on top of. Bettman declined to speak in specifics on Monday, and none of those dealers has publicly commented other than to offer a few generalities.
Sportlogiq cofounder and CEO Craig Buntin, for example, has recently stated that the NHL’s plan is “one of the most forward-thinking, innovative, interesting approachings in any conference I’ve insured so far. I really think that the insights these guys produce, based on the ideas they have so far, could really, genuinely change the sport.”
Read more: sporttechie.com
