Friday, July 26, 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.
- Twitter will livestream content from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics through a new partnership with NBC. All content will live on the @NBCOlympics handle and will be shown only to U.S.-based Twitter users. Coverage will include a 20-minute live studio show every morning, real-time highlights, and a daily poll that will allow users to vote for which athlete, sport, or moment they’d like to watch live on Twitter. “Over the last four Games, we have worked with Twitter to fuel the Olympic conversation … we are now taking that conversation to the next level by offering a daily 20-minute morning show live from Tokyo and opening a daily live window to peek into the NBC primetime broadcast,” Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics, said in a statement.
- Timing is everything: Zybek Sports Aims to Standardize 40-Yard Dash for Youth Athletes
- DraftKings has reached a multiyear agreement to become an authorized gaming operator of Major League Baseball. The expanded partnership will enhance DraftKings’ live and in-game betting options as the company now has access to MLB’s official data feeds powered by Statcast. Official MLB team logos will also be integrated into DraftKings’ sportsbook app as part of the deal. “I think we’ll have critical mass of operators. There’ll be some that don’t partner with us and I don’t think they’ll be around that long,” Kenny Gersh, MLB’s EVP of gaming and gusiness venture, said at a Sportradar event in London earlier this month, according to EGR.
- ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney World in Orlando, Fla., will host the National High School Esports Championship in June 2020. The announcement was made in partnership with the Electronic Gaming Federation. The three-day championship tournament will feature the best high school esports teams in America, with regional qualifying events scheduled for fall 2019 and spring 2020.
- LaLiga has renewed its agreement to continue providing anti-piracy services to the Jupiler Pro League of Belgium. In 2018, LaLiga successfully helped Belgium’s top soccer league delete 23,652 illegal videos, 100 social media profiles, 703 apps from Google Play and iTunes Store that were showing Pro League content, and more than 5,700 illegal live streaming links from Google. “Our effective collaboration with LaLiga forms a crucial part of our Anti-Piracy Action Plan. Currently we are having discussions with various stakeholders to even increase our battle against piracy so to continue to safeguard the value of our competition in the future,” Pierre François, Jupiler Pro League CEO, said in a press release.
- Not everyone in the Portland Timbers organization lives and breathes data. Coach Giovanni Savarese, for one, still relies heavily on feel when making decisions for the pitch, but he admits there’s at least some value in analytics for elevating performance. And that’s a good thing, because the Timbers have been building out a robust sports science team in search of gaining a competitive advantage.
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