NHL Scores with Wireless Technology

Sports such as baseball, basketball, and football have been intensive users of information technology to improve player and team performance and enhance the viewing experience. Todays sports fans dont want to just watch a sport: They want to engage with it, and they expect more information and interactiondata-enhanced viewing, live streaming, video on demand, mobile apps, and social media than they used to in the past. Digital technology has become essential for attracting fans, sponsors, and broadcasters.

One could say, however, that hockey has been late to the game. The National Hockey League (NHL), comprising 32 teams (25 in the United States and 7 in Canada), was slow to use game-generated data and advanced metrics and lacked actual data to support many subjective opinions people had about how well players and teams performed during games. Now thats about to change. In 2020, the NHL began the process of deploying the NHL Edge Puck and Player Tracking system, based on technology developed by SMT (SportsMedia Technology). The system debuted at the 2020 NHL All-Star Game and was featured at the 2020 NHL Conference Finals. Now, all arenas in the league have been equipped with technology. The system tracks every movement of the puck and each teams players during a game. The system is able to precisely and instantaneously detect puck and player positioning, speed, shot, skating distance, and time on ice. Exactly how quickly is a player skating? How long did he control the puck? How much time did he spend in the scoring zone? Now these questions can be answered.

The technology includes 14 to 16 antennae installed in arena rafters; four 4K cameras to support tracking functions; a wireless sensor sewn into the back of the jersey of each player on each team; and pucks embedded with a tiny battery, a tiny circuit board, and infrared and radio frequency sensors. After some initial difficulty with the first batch of pucks, which were recalled because they did not glide effectively, new pucks introduced in October 2021 have proved to be much better. The devices mounted in the rafters and on the upper tier of each arena record the x, y, and z coordinates of each sensor on the players and pucks hundreds of times per second. The system generates more than a million 3D data points over the course of a single game (Big Data), which feed into SMTs OASIS software platform.

OASIS collates and analyzes the millions of coordinate data points to generate statistics, such as a players top speed or total time of possession, and also triggers a separate system, SMT OPTICS, that automatically provides real-time graphics for use by broadcasters. The NHL has also partnered with Amazons Amazon Web Services (AWS), naming it as its official cloud, artificial intelligence, and machine learning infrastructure provider in 2021. AWS is providing the NHL with a cloud-based video content delivery and storage system.AWS artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, coupled with the data from the Edge Puck and Player Tracking system, enabled the NHL to provide even more advanced shot and save analytics during the 20212022 hockey season.

The flood of data about player speed and execution is changing how coaches, broadcasters, and fans interact with the game. All the new data and metrics will of course be used by coaches and team managers to improve team performance, but these numbers will also enhance the fan experience inside the arena and among those watching on television or on mobile devices. In some cases, both types of viewing experiences may even include a digital stream broadcast dedicated to showcasing puck and player data.

According to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, player and puck tracking was initially designed to give people more insight into the game, show them how special the game is, and help them understand hockey a little better. However, the business opportunities for using these data have expanded. For instance, according to NHL VP of Technology Keith Horstman, the new technology will enable in-play sports betting, allowing fans to wager on which player skates the fastest or shoots the hardest, or how far the puck travels on a particular shot. It also enables hockey fans to engage with the sport more deeply, whether that is through gaming, participating in fantasy leagues, or enriching their own education and insight into the game. The NHL hopes that this higher level of engagement will produce more revenue for the NHL and its clubs. The sports Big Data, which is gathered via wireless technology, analyzed with AI techniques, and stored and distributed via cloud services, has indeed become a game changer.

• What were some of the issues facing that sport?
• What technologies can be implemented to help alleviate these issues?
• What would be the impact of these technologies?
• How reliant on technology do you think professional sports would be 10 years down the road?