Khalil Mack puts a hit on Nick Foles in last season’s NFC wild-card playoff game. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
Monday, July 29, 2019 – A roundup of some of the key sports technology stories you need to know, including SportTechie’s own content and stories from around the web.
- NFL teams will leverage data from Pro Football Focus to make decisions regarding player performance and salary. Earlier this month, PFF teamed with Amazon Web Services to bolster its data tracking capabilities. “We’re taking all this data and we’re throwing it into these massive computer systems and it’s starting to come out with breakdowns on which positions are the most valuable, how much should they be paid, how much should you pay the quarterback,” PFF owner and former NFL wide receiver Cris Collinsworth said according to Fox Business.
- The NBA announced a five-year partnership expansion with Chinese media conglomerate Tencent. The move will see Tencent expand its offerings of live NBA games and video-on-demand content, and launch new “mini programs” for mobile devices. “The enormous reach and popularity of Tencent’s platforms have been a driving force behind the growth of basketball in China, and we look forward to deepening our connection with NBA fans across the country through this expanded partnership,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a press release.
- The Players’ Tribune co-founder Jaymee Messler, Thunder Road Films founder Basil Iwanyk, and former Ticketmaster executive Greg Economou have launched a new athlete-driven production studio called (co)laboratory. The studio aims to connect athletes with actors, directors, producers and writers to create content across TV, film, audio and digital. “We’re excited to work with brands, teams and leagues to help elevate their existing original programming and capitalize on the boom in sports-driven content,” Economou said in a press release.
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- The WNBA’s website will now integrate video into its statistics page for the 2019 season. WNBA.com/stats will allow users to select a stat and view a video list of associated plays when browsing sortable stats pages, individual player pages, or team profiles. In the upcoming weeks, video will be available for the 2018 season.
- Pizza Hut, Hut, Hut, Hike! The NFL and EA Sports announced that Pizza Hut and Snickers will sponsor the EA Sports Madden NFL 20 Championship Series. All major games played in the tournament will occur in Pizza Hut Stadium, marking the first-ever virtual stadium rights deal in esports. “We view esports as a key accelerant to growing the NFL. It enables new ways for young fans to engage in the sport through Madden NFL competition,” Rachel Hoagland, NFL vice president, head of gaming and esports, said in a statement.
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- Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson doesn’t plan to mimic what he calls the “media and entertainment” business model of franchises in other leagues. With the NFL, NBA and MLB all playing games that have a number of stoppages, many franchises in those sports have invested in third-party technologies designed to entertain fans during pauses in the action. But, says Paulson, “Soccer is a unique sport. It’s a 90-minute sport. You know that when you go to a game—win, lose, draw—it’s a two-hour [event] from when you show up at the stadium to when you’re in your car. That’s not the same as other sports that drag on and on.”
- When Mike LaBelle received his first media attention for gaming success back in 2007, the headline in the Houston Chronicle described EA Sports’ FIFA game as “thumb soccer.” The word “esports” had been coined as far back as 1999, but was still relatively unknown outside of the gaming community. And competitive gaming was far from a billion-dollar industry. Though LaBelle is still an active player—and will compete in the eMLS All-Star Challenge this weekend in Orlando—he is also a regular FIFA analyst and will fill that role for the FIFA eWorld Cup broadcast at the O2 Arena in London on Aug. 2-4. (NYCFC’s Chris Holly is the lone eMLS player to qualify.)
- Measuring 40-yard dash times should be straightforward—an athlete starts running and then crosses the finish line—but little is clear-cut in the murky world of college recruiting. Disparate methods, such as manually using a stopwatch or electronically timing it with technology, can create significant discrepancies in performance data. Enter Zybek Sports, a Colorado-based company that has powered the timing mechanism at the NFL Combine for the last nine years. Zybek has struck a new partnership with D1 Training to offer its Standardized Athlete Test (SAT) at franchises across the country.
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