Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League are in the process of figuring out unique ways to tell stories, and potentially even one day fuel sports betting microtransactions, using real-time data collected from players during games.
MLB has already had an optical tracking system in place for a few years, while the NHL has plans to roll out its new player-and-puck tracking technology league-wide starting next season. Both leagues hope to use data to propel new fan experiences that they hope will interest both new and existing fans.
At the San Francisco 49ers and SportTechie Horizon Summit held this week at Levi’s Stadium, Chris Foster, the NHL’s director of digital business development, said his league is making “a very serious commitment” to the tracking system it tested this past season. The league plans to use the data, collected at a rate of 200 times a second, to build predictive models and generate unique real-time statistics that would fuel new fan interactions with the game and enhance the broadcast experience.
“Going to a live hockey game, there’s nothing quite like it. But one of the challenges we had on television was the speed of it,” Foster said. “We’ll be tracking the speed of our players, who routinely travel at 30 miles per hour. And we’ll also be able to bring in new statistics. Passing has become so important in our game and the only statistic we really have is the assist, which was introduced in the 1920s. Now with this new tracking technology we can create metrics such as pass efficiency, pass completion rate … statistics that will really enhance the appreciation and understanding of the amazing skills of our players.”
In MLB, the Oakland A’s are working on ways to liven up the game using real-time tracking statistics, which the league has been collecting through a series of optical tracking systems at its ballparks since 2015.
Oakland A’s Chief Operating Officer Chris Giles said the franchise is currently in talks with a few vendors to potentially offer sports betting microtransactions on a number of aspects of live games once betting in California is legalized.
“The beauty of baseball as a game is it can be broken up into little micro segments. So we’re working with a couple of different companies that are actually working right now to price pitch-by-pitch wagers,” Giles said. “You can basically say ‘Hey, on this next pitch I think there’s going to be contact and here’s the odds. I think there’s going to be a home run and here’s the odds.’ Those sort of things are really opportunities for us.”
Giles said innovation on the sports wagering side, and other in-stadium tweaks based on fan feedback, will help teams to do a better job of “attracting that next generation of fan,” which is characterized by an “ultra-short attention span.”
“Little things like that, such as giving them the ability to place these little microwagers, but also reevaluating the traditional live experience and not forcing fans to sit shoulder-to-shoulder in a linear configuration, giving them opportunities to really experience baseball the way they want to,” he said.
This content is part of our coverage of the San Francisco 49ers and SportTechie Horizon Summit. SportTechie organizes regular events that bring together innovators, investors, and key decision makers from across the world of sports technology. Find out more about future events here.