Optical Tracking of Player Performance, Game Action Fueling Sports

The sports industry is going optical in a major way. Players don't need to be convinced to wear a device. Data collection is frictionless and noninvasive for the athlete and easily obtained by teams and broadcasters. The metrics are married to video and eliminate the need for sync between time stamps. The industry will remain relevant for a while. It will be relevant to measure biometrics and internal load. and hydration and glucose monitoring. in some training settings. In some settings, camera coverage from a certain heigh or perspective isn't feasible.

AI is driving the growth of optical tracking technology in sports. Phil Cheetham is the chief scientific officer of Sportsbox AI. Miky Tamir founded several optical trackers in the sports industry. American Sports Medicine Institute will partner with a purely camera-based motion capture system in July 2020. Kyle Boddy believes mobile, inexpensive, biomechanics tracking is going to change the game forever. He compares it to the research done on pitch tracking by Pitch F/X and TrackMan. The founder of Driveline Baseball, Kyle, also served as the Cincinnati Reds’ director of pitching.

Automated video production companies such as Pixellot can track the action across a field while zooming, panning and switching angles without human input. Pixelot streamed more than 1 million games across 20,000 field and arena installations in 2021. It provides livestreams across sports organizations, including Jr. NBA, MLB-affiliated development leagues, Scottish pro soccer and the National Federation of State High School Associations.

Sportsbooks are looking for advanced data streams to inform their oddsmaking and create unique prop bets. MGM Resorts has exclusive access to some of the MLB's Statcast data. Movrs uses computer vision to extract data insights from tennis. LVision began using computer Vision to extracts data from 20 sports.

HomeCourt has tracked more than 100 million basketball shots and SwingVision is on its way to do the same in tennis. Both automatically clip highlights. The smartphone-based technologies will democratize advanced training methods and provide more instruction and feedback to young players. Computer vision and optical tracking are only limited by imagination. Better devices mean better data and better decisions. The Baltimore Orioles assistant general manager Sig Mejdal is an observer of emerging technological trends.

This story also appeared in the Feb. 14, 2022 edition of Sports Business Journal.