Sports leagues, networks and technology companies are “finding novel ways to take apart games -- showing only the most exciting bits or helping viewers focus on a single player or statistic,” and it “may be changing the way we watch sports, or even why we watch,” according to Joshua Brustein in the N.Y. TIMES’ “Week in Review” section. California-based tech company Thuuz is “developing a computer program that it says can tell fans when to begin watching" a game. Thuuz “analyzes live feeds of play-by-play statistics, measuring factors like the pace of the game, the closeness of the score and other factors.” It then rates “games on a 100-point scale, and allows users to sign up to receive alerts whenever their personal threshold for excitement is reached.” Thuuz incorporates team loyalty and “is developing ways to identify unusual events that do not necessarily show up on the scoreboard.” Brustein noted the “trick is to predict when a game will be worth watching for the next five minutes.” Meanwhile, the Jets are in partnership with N.Y.-based Pre Play Sports, a technology startup that “designed a game for mobile phones that awards points to fans for predicting the outcome of each play as they watch the game, with more points given for unlikely predictions.” Company officials said that the average Pre Play Sports player spends 40 minutes with the app, “a monumental period of time by smartphone standards” (N.Y. TIMES, 3/13).
