The NWSL Seattle Reign are "among a dozen teams piloting Microsoft’s Sports Performance Platform, a data monitoring and analytics program that officially launched last month," according to Matt Day of the SEATTLE TIMES. The software is "part analytics display tool, part web-based data repository." Reign players "take a brief wellness survey daily, rating sleep, soreness and hydration." GPS and heart-rate trackers they wear during training sessions and games "feed in data about how much ground players cover and how hard they’re working." The result is "dashboards for individual players and the team that aim to score readiness, and, using Microsoft’s machine-learning algorithms, flag at what point the stress of a season could be leading to an injury and time away from the field." Reign coach Laura Harvey said, "The reason we do it is to prevent injury. So far, so good." The Reign also use the tool because Microsoft pays the team "to do so, part of the sponsorship that placed the company’s name and logo on the front" of their jerseys. Reign Owner Bill Predmore said, "Part of what Microsoft wanted out of the partnership was to have a real-world test case, a team up on the platform. For us, it gave us technology that we otherwise would not have been able to afford." The platform "comes with widgets geared to five sports: soccer, American football, baseball, basketball and cricket, a favorite" of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (SEATTLETIMES.com, 7/21).
