UK football breaks new ground with skeletal tracking tech

Team talk

Football DataCo (FDC) is the official data rights holder of UK football including the English Premier League.

Ahead of the 2019/20 season, FDC wanted a tracking partner to equip Premier League coaches, fans and broadcasters with the highest quality data to deliver new insights on team and player performance.

Tactics

As the existing official betting data and integrity partner of UK football, in 2019 Genius Sports was selected as Football DataCo’s Official Tracking Provider through its Second Spectrum technology. Genius Sports installed its computer vision-powered technology in every Premier League stadium, delivering new insights such as shot velocities, passing options and the distance between the closest defender and the goal. In 2019, Genius Sports partnered with BT Sport to help power the broadcaster’s Matchday Experience solution with tracking-based insights, integrated graphics and live animations.

Final result

In October 2022, Football DataCo expanded its tracking partnership with Genius Sports to include sub-second skeletal data.

Genius Sports’ technology automatically captures real-time positional data on every Premier League player and the ball, unlocking a new wealth of insights.

Skeletal tracking delivers automated virtual renders of every play, creating exciting new opportunities across augmented broadcasts, automated officiating, richer fan experiences including metaverse applications and much more. Premier League clubs are also continuing to deploy Genius Sports’ advanced Insight feed to enhance performance analysis through richer team and player metrics.

“Technology continues to drive how data is collected, analysed and presented. Working with Genius Sports' Second Spectrum technology enables Football DataCo to be at the cutting edge of what is possible, and we look forward to developing new ways of using data for our stakeholders.”

Adrian Ford, Football DataCo

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