NEW YORK — A native of Sweden, Zebra Technologies CEO Anders Gustafsson didn’t grow up watching the NFL. But the company he now leads is helping to change the game as the league’s official on-field player tracking provider.
“It changes obviously how you view football and how you coach football,” Gustafsson said at Bloomberg Breakaway.
For the past three seasons, Zebra receivers installed in NFL stadiums have communicated with radio-frequency identification (RFID) transmitters placed inside the shoulder pads of each player. Data such as acceleration, alignment, speed and total distance run helps provide the NFL with “Next Gen Stats.”
Last season, the data was provided to each team while Zebra also developed a football with Wilson Sporting Goods with an RFID tag that was used in NFL preseason games and Thursday Night Football games.
And in the future, the partnership could provide even more opportunities for Zebra Technologies and the NFL to work closely to expand the Zebra Sports Solution.
“Biometrics might be one of those (things),” Gustafsson said, noting that the solution can measure biometric data such as heart rate and temperature.”
As for the Wilson footballs that can measure distance traveled among other metrics, one day it could be that every NFL ball contains the RFID tag.
“This is for the NFL to decide,” Gustafsson said. “There’s nothing holding it back. Having that as an extra data point provided a richer set of information for the coaches and the teams.
“I would hope that that’s coming. I can’t speak on behalf of the NFL, but there’s no technical issue for why it wouldn’t be.”
Zebra Technologies CTO Tom Bianculli added that data fused together has implications beyond the field of play and possible uses in virtual reality and gaming for fans.
“It’s probably pretty limitless,” he said of the future.
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The deal that Zebra Technologies has with the NFL enables the company to showcase on a big stage its tracking and location solutions technology that can be used in healthcare, retail, manufacturing and transportation and logistics.
“You look at Zebra’s strategy, it’s probably the easiest way to communicate with people who aren’t deep into our industry the concept of what it is we do around visibility, how to connect the physical world with the digital world and be able to get data around,” Gustafsson said.
“Everyone can relate to being able to track football players…We use the same technology in many other areas. If we can enhance it for the NFL and for sports, we can generally commercialize it for other customers also. And from a brand perspective it’s very important.”
NFL coaches and players have gotten to know Zebra Technologies as well. New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton has publicly spoken on behalf of the company.
“One of the players, Jameis Winston, he wasn’t familiar with the technology,” Gustafsson said of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback. “When he heard about it, he said, ‘Oh, how can I learn more? I want to know. I want to have access to all the data. I want to see how I can use that data to be the best.'”