A photo of the Washington Spirit playing at Audi Field in Washington D.C. — home of the NWSL title game Saturday night — is captured and analyzed by Spiideo.Courtesy of Spiideo
There’s an attentive eye that has tracked every goal from the Portland Thorns’ Sophia Smith or every save from the Kansas City Current’s Adrianna Franch or every everything that happened in the NWSL this season.
Spiideo, an automated camera, has been installed in every NWSL venue since 2021 as well as more than half of the clubs’ practice facilities. The two championship participants, Portland and Kansas City, both have multi-camera setups in their stadiums and an installation in their practice facility.
About half the NWSL clubs organically became Spiideo customers, at which point it struck a league-wide deal to cover everyone. The AI-powered hardware and accompanying analysis software is now the provider for the league’s video exchange, enabling coaches to scout the performance and tactics for both match prep and personnel decisions.
“It's providing a consistent tactical video for all the games,” says Matthew Delicâte, Spiideo’s director of sales for North America. “That's a big thing — even still happening at the NCAA level is you're going to have inconsistency across the quality of video. Sometimes it could be an injured player or a team manager filming with a camcorder. Other times it could be a broadcast, ESPN-level thing. It's just a huge variance of overall quality and consistency.”
Based in Sweden, Spiideo (rhymes with “video”) has made inroads in soccer on this continent. Delicâte, a former VCU star who played 13 pro seasons with the USL’s Richmond Kickers, was the company’s first overseas reseller. The first US installation was at his alma mater, followed by other local schools such as the University of Virginia, before expansion to USL, NWSL and MLS clubs and, subsequently, some league deals: the NWSL, USL, the top men’s and women’s leagues in Iceland and Power 5 NCAA conferences SEC and Big 12. US Soccer has used the footage to keep tabs on national team players when they compete for their clubs.
“You can't use broadcast video to teach athletes because it just simply too zoomed in,”Delicâte says. “All of the things that are happening off the ball, which are really relevant to teach athletes, you can't see with a broadcast video.”
The technology also works with nearly a dozen other sports. Globally, it has thousands of clients including some major European clubs from Serie A, Bundesliga and the Premier League. Among North American pro sports, it also has teams from MLB and the NHL.
Spiideo can be used for streaming as easily as analysis. The KC Current’s training facility, for instance, hosts youth tournaments and makes the live video available to families, fans and recruiters. The Current even have a multi-camera setup for the practice pitch.
“Facilities matter so much,” said Current co-owner Angie Long at this week’s SBJ Game Changers event, referring to the importance of building its $15 million training ground, the first dedicated NWSL facility of its kind. While other teams are often sharing space with college or pro teams, piecing together a field here and a weight room there, the Current prioritized a state-of-the-art venue. “How can that [shared environment] possibly compete from a performance perspective, from a development perspective, with a training center where everything is all integrated into one?” she added.
While there are other automated video competitors in this space — Veo and Pixellot, to name two with notable US market share — Delicâte says Spiideo’s selling points include its intuitive interface and its latest product update, AutoData.
The new AutoData analysis feature, which was announced last year and has been in testing earlier in 2022, has begun seeing adoption from customers. It automates event detection such as goals, shots and saves as well as physical performance output such as the distance players have run and how many times they sprinted. AutoData also collects team data such as passing networks.
Delicâte also highlights the ease of use for the system. When reviewing on an iPad, for instance, telestration is done quickly, and with a few simple taps, a coach can put a spotlight to track a player during a replay or select, say, his three defenders with the distance between them automatically computed. That can help inform adherence to tactical formation with the distance changing as the video plays; he or she can even select another Spiideo camera angle to toggle between the two while keeping the same graphical presentation from either vantage point.
“You can be doing video analysis within 30 minutes,” Delicâte says. “The old typical analyst would have to have quite an in-depth knowledge and training on certain systems, and this empowers anybody to do video analysis, including the players.”
