
Sports is all about human movement, action and reactions – on the track, on the court and on the mat. It is this vital aspect that’s is getting revolutionised by technology. Major technological advancements in Cloud computing, Machine Learning, AR/VR/XR, Video Compression and Video Data Capture and Material Sciences are driving the development of new Use Cases in Sports. Sports is a field where a split second, a single point, a miss or a touch can be the difference between a win and a loss. Billions of dollars riding on such outcomes.
Consider this, a single ML based Sports Tech start up in the US, Second Spectrum has revolutionized the NBA by training an ML model inputting 500 mn moves in the model including each shot (dunks, 3 points) and then giving out exact positions of most probable shots that would go in. This has led to most teams reworking their gameplay strategies to optimize around those exact positions on the court. Now, 29 out of 30 NBA teams work with Second Spectrum and leverage the power on ML for maximising their outcomes.
Similar developments happening in Computer Vision is giving rise to start-ups that can read balls hit in a tennis match, ‘Line Call’ decisions in Tennis, Athletics, Badminton, Cricket, Football and many others. Remember the 100 m finals of Paris Olympics 2024? Computer vision cameras decided the winner was Noah Lyles over Kishane Thompson by 5/1000th of a second! The Omega photo finish camera that captured images at 40,000 frames per second decided the race in favour of Noah Lyles. The race time for both athletes was 9.784 and 9.789. Whew!
Technology is making the world of sports more competitive, more engaging as well as more accurate.