As the NFL celebrates its 100th season this fall, technology continues to transform the sport. The league is upgrading stadiums to 5G networks, partnering with Sportradar to exclusively distribute official data for sportsbooks, connecting on-field officials with the centralized replay review headquarters, and testing a series of innovations in the background. Those experiments include the use of computer vision to identify on-field events, direct video feeds to conduct replays, and a pilot program to study how sensors embedded in mouthguards might help detect head impacts.
SportTechie spoke with NFL chief information officer Michelle McKenna to preview the technology being utilized in league operations in 2019.
SPORTTECHIE: Are there any new fan engagement strategies that the NFL is looking into?
MICHELLE MCKENNA: We’re rolling 5G to several stadiums by kickoff and many by the end of the season through our partnership with Verizon. While [5G tech] is not in a lot of devices in the marketplace, we’re starting to begin to test what can be done with the fan experience, what can be enabled by a much faster connection than any of us have ever experienced. I’ve had a chance to see some of that, and that’s pretty amazing.
From a fan perspective, we want to make sure their in-stadium experience is as flawless as possible—putting the right things in their hands, putting the right things in their app. I’m also responsible for the game day technology, so a lot of game day evolution is probably the biggest focus this year.
SPORTTECHIE: Such as?
MCKENNA: We’ve expanded additional instant replay enhancements, as well as we’re testing a multi-camera angle instant replay system where we receive the feeds direct to our centralized command center versus through the networks. That’s how it works [now]: the network cuts up the angles, and they send them to us. That’s how we get our feeds for the instant replay system. This year, we’re testing a way to get a look at whatever we want to see versus what gets fed to us.
The infrastructure is there, and now it’s about the operation and the actual technology to have our own system versus having a network truck do it. [We’re testing] a few games on both coasts to make sure the latency is where we want it to be. And we’re doing a bake-off between a few vendors, so that’ll be interesting.
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On the field, we’ve expanded the coach-to-coach communication systems as well as the referees’ communication systems. Only the head referee used to be able to hear New York in his earpiece, and now all officials can hear everything—all in an effort to keep communication going, less time to huddle up and discuss, make better calls, consistency.
SPORTTECHIE: How much did the implementation of the new pass interference replay rule cross your desk?
MCKENNA: What crossed my desk was, did we have the right angles to be able to have made that call? So, of course, all of America had it, so we had it as well. So it ended up being not a technology issue, but it wasn’t in our rulebook that that could be challenged.
That’s what’s interesting about the intersection of the game and technology. There are so many cool things you can do. We’re testing some computer vision this year as well. You can detect things happening before they actually get seen by the human eye. Over time, you can train a computer to recognize patterns. But, at the same time, it has to meet the business case, and it has to fit in our rules system. We’re always testing a lot of things in advance of the need.
SPORTTECHIE: The NBA uses a computer vision system, Second Spectrum. The NHL is trying to bring one in, Sportlogiq. Are you using it for performance analytics or for rules enforcement?
MCKENNA: We’re trying it on a little bit of all areas. One of the big, brave new areas that we’re going into this year is legalized sports betting. Our stats feed is now the official feed for sports betting in the NFL. Our advantage is, we want to have the fastest and the most accurate stats available to keep the game as safe and compliant as it should be from a betting standpoint. Things are only going to get faster and faster, so how fast can someone put a stat in a computer versus how quickly could a computer see something happen and register it? Take latency out of the operation. Those are some of the things we’re testing this year—when a flag comes out, automatically detecting it instead of a person saying ‘flag.’ Anything like that, we’re testing to always evolve the game.
SPORTTECHIE: How involved were you in the conversations with Sportradar?
MCKENNA: Very. That was my team that runs that stat feed. They brought their solution and tested it against our internal solution, and we partnered together. We tested it, and we believe we’ve got the best, fastest process ready to go. We’ve been testing it in the preseason. It’s a whole new world. As an IT person, you’re used to being involved, certainly, with everything that’s behind the scenes, but when all of a sudden the feed becomes a revenue [stream]—I tell my guys, ‘We’re on the revenue side now.’
SPORTTECHIE: Last year, fans could track Next Gen Stats’ real-time player movement in the Pro Bowl data demo—was that done in advance of sports betting?
MCKENNA: Yeah, it was just to see what fans would engage with. And we love preseason because without things like those games—where the outcome isn’t the be-all, end-all—we can test. Just like the players and the coaches are all seeing who starts and who gets what position, we’re deciding what we will push and what we won’t push. Are we ready for prime time or does it need a little more baking? It’s like a live lab that we use. Pro Bowl is a really good example.
SPORTTECHIE: The unauthenticated in-market streaming hosted by the NFL app and by Yahoo—how do you feel that went in its first year?
MCKENNA: Even if they didn’t consume it as much as we thought, I think it was huge. We really want our fans to have access to our games. We don’t want to put up gates, and let’s face it, the demographic that we’re trying to go at with these—never-corders—they’re not going to authenticate. We’ll see that just continue to grow.
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But you know what’s really cool? Our game continues to be the one television event that people still want to come together and watch. So streaming on a phone or streaming where you are, it’s really meant to be short-form between when you’re either getting to the game or getting to whoever’s house you’re going to—or you’re at work and you’ve got to catch a few glimpses. I still think that’s what’s great about our content. It’s still big screen-based.
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