Stadiums for three top Dutch soccer clubs have begun deploying “smart technology” to detect and identify fans who commit racist and discriminatory behavior during matches. The technology includes in-venue cameras, artificial intelligence, and sound equipment.  

The participating clubs are PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoord, which both play in the top-tier Eredivisie, and the third club is PEC Zwolle, which played in Eredivisie last season but has been relegated to the second-tier Eerste Divisie for the 2022-23 season. The systems to deter negative fan behavior will vary at each venue. PSV’s P hilips Stadion will use cameras to monitor crowd chants, and AI will be used to detect concerning sounds. A human operator then listens to the audio to determine necessary action.

“The initiatives comply with Dutch privacy laws and regulations and should contribute to a more positive sports culture in football stadiums,” Dutch soccer’s KNVB said in a statement.   

The Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB) is leading the pilot program, which the Netherlands government’s Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport has committed more than $1 million to help finance. Dutch soccer says it will consider expanding the program to a fourth stadium later this year.  

“After one year, it should become clear whether, and how, these smart technologies have helped to identify racism and discrimination and to identify those responsible," the KNVB said.  

The added fan surveillance in Dutch stadiums comes after Mexico’s top soccer league moved to deploy facial recognition cameras in stadiums following a violent brawl between fans in March. In another move to combat online abuse from fans, the English Premier League and four players are among those backing OPON , a social media app that requires users to upload identification to access certain features.   

The NHL is taking its first step into the metaverse during Eastern Conference Finals Game 6 between the Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Rangers.

During the “Third Period Live” shoulder programming, the league’s digital media platforms will incorporate Beyond Sports’ technology, which renders the players in 3D based on their NHL Edge tracking data. Available either in virtual reality or on traditional 2D screens, Beyond Sports replicates the players as “Blockies,” block-shaped cartoons who mirror the on-ice action.

Third Period Live is hosted by Jillian Sakovits, Julie Stewart Binks and a number of current and former players. It can be seen on NHL social channels, including its YouTube page.

Beyond Sports’ product was on display at the NHL’s recent technology showcase in the Prudential Center, at which Beyond Sport CTO and co-founder Nicolaas Westerhof said, “We can make characters look like anything you want—it doesn't have to be realistic. It can be a fun character, in this case aimed especially at the kids. The younger generation are just not as engaged anymore with watching television in the linear way. They're not sitting on the couch watching TV for three hours watching the game, so what we're trying to do is we're trying to make it more fun for them.”

Graduate students from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, have won the NFL’s fourth annual Big Data Bowl sponsored by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The winning students—Robyn Ritchie, Brendan Kumagai, Ryker Moreau and Elijah Cavan—mark the first college team to win the data analytics competition and the first to include a women champion in Ritchie.

This year’s Big Data Bowl had more than 200 participants and challenged applicants to analyze NFL special teams plays to determine what strategies make for a successful punt, field-goal or extra-point play. Participants had access to scouting data from Pro Football Focus and player-tracking data from the NFL’s Next Gen Stats that included speed, direction and location metrics for all NFL special teams players during games from 2018-20.

The winning team analyzed video on punt returns to create an algorithm that displays the optimal path for a runner on punt returns based on the position of blockers and defenders and whether the returner took advantage of those gaps. The team created a new stat called Return Yards Above Expected to evaluate a punt returner’s decision making.

“It really originally started with the convex hull that quantifies the space the team is taking up,” Ritchie told AWS. “Where are they around the punt returner? And that's where we really started and that took us the whole first month. Eventually, I asked, can we find our way through the convex hull? And then it just kind of snowballed. We had so many different ideas to bring in, like blocker leverages, the convex hull, the modeling aspects, and the optimal path.”

Finalists for this year’s Big Data Bowl were competing for a $100,000 prize pool. This year’s panel of judges included New England Patriots special teamer Cody Davis, who has a master's degree in data science from Texas Tech. Since the NFL and AWS hosted the first Big Data Bowl in 2019, more than 30 contestants have been hired to analytics positions across the sports industry.

Stats Perform is launching its new live Opta Vision product to merge tracking and event data for soccer matches in the 2022-23 season.

Opta has been a leading provider of event data for years, feeding sports books and media companies. SportVU 2.0 is the company’s optical tracking system. The new Opta Vision will sync the datasets and use Stats Perform's Qwinn AI to develop further insights. Opta Vision's tracking data  will include stadium feeds from camera systems installed at match venues and, for the first time, remote tracking collection from video sources. Among the new metrics measured are pass predictions, formation analysis of a team’s shape and pressure intensity.

Stats Perform is already a data partner of the English Premier League, La Liga, Ligue 1, Serie A, MLS, Eredivisie and the Chinese Super League.

IMG Academy is expanding its use of Connexa Sports Technologies’ PlaySight cameras to include all 55 of its tennis courts at its Bradenton, Fla., campus. PlaySight initially provided its AI-powered cameras and video analysis for IMG’s baseball program beginning in 2020.

Tennis tech company Slinger acquired PlaySight Interactive for $82 million in a deal first announced last October. The merged group, which also includes GameFace.AI and Foundation Tennis, rebranded as Connexa Sports Technologies in May as part of a unified effort to equip connected, smart sports facilities. PlaySight products are also used in the NBA, MLB and NHL. 

PlaySight is best known for its work in tennis, which began at its founding in 2015. It streams and analyzes video automatically and is used by more than 100 collegiate tennis programs as well as numerous national tennis federations. The IMG Academy began as the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in 1978 before IMG acquired and renamed it after adding other sports. Among its famous alums are Andre Agassi, Monica Seles, Jim Courier, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova.

The popularity of the NBA playoffs has led to the widespread growth of Gambit, a burgeoning tokenized fantasy sports platform.

Gambit, which merges free-to-play with play-to-earn content, has seen 23,000 registered users through the NBA playoffs, with over half of its fan engagement coming from Southeast Asia and India. The startup was constructed on the RLY Network and is backed by SuperLayer, a Web3 venture studio that recently led a $1.5 million pre-seed round.

With a mantra of winability and persistence, Gambit is promoting itself as giving users a superior fantasy sports experience with Superlayer’s funding. Superlayer’s investors include former Super Bowl MVP Joe Montana and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz and also does business with the RLY Network—which is heavily involved in consumer crypto applications.

The USFL has chosen Élevé Health as its official recovery therapy provider and has begun deploying its technologies to the reborn football league’s 400 players.  

Élevé Health makes Red Light Therapy Beds, Vibro-Acoustic Beds, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) Chambers and Pulsed Electro-Magnetic Field (PEMF) therapy . The California-based company touts itself as the world’s first mass distributor of hyperbaric chambers. Among Élevé ’s athlete ambassadors are Barcelona FC right back Dani Alves, NFL Hall of Fame player and current TV analyst Shannon Sharpe and retired UFC champion V ítor Belfort.

With the new partnership, Élevé Health will provide the USFL with a therapy room to help players recover faster and improve  their overall health and performance.

Former Catapult senior vice president Karl Hogan has joined smart mouthguard developer Prevent Biometrics as an advisor. He will work closely with CEO Mike Shogren to help grow Prevent Biometrics both operationally and commercially.   

The U.S. Department of Defense and more than 100 sports organizations use Prevent’s sensor-embedded mouthguards to track data on head impacts, including a program being conducted by World Rugby to equip more than 1,000 rugby players across youth and pro levels with the devices. The mouthguard records data on a collision's load, location, direction and rotational motion. Minneapolis-based Prevent Biometrics raised $5 million earlier this year.   

Australia-based Catapult , whose GPS-tracking wearables and video analysis tools are used by more than 3,400 teams across the NFL, MLB, NBA, MLS, Major League Rugby, the EPL and Bundesliga, enabled integration of its platforms with Prevent’s mouthguard data in 2019. Hogan worked at Catapult from 2016 through Jan. 2021, most recently as its SVP of partnerships and communications.  

The Future of Sport Lab, a collaboration of Toronto Metropolitan University and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment , has selected its new cohort of eight Canadian sports tech startups . The selected companies will participate in programming at the Ted Rogers School of Business and the DMZ business incubator as well as receive mentorship from MLSE executives.  

The selected startups span a variety of verticals: athlete performance, fan engagement, venue technology and youth sports. This year’s class includes:  

Previous classes of the FSL incubator include d Zone7, StreamLayer , Spalk and The Gist.  

Players on the Connecticut Sun will begin offering digital autographs for fans through the WNBA team’s new multi-game partnership with online event solutions provider Virtual Tables. The team will use Virtual Tables’ DigiSign software to host live digital autograph sessions with fans.   

Fans who sign up for DigiSign can select digital photos of Sun players that the player then applies their digital signature to during remote video chat rooms held amongst fans and players. The digital autograph is sent to the fans’ email for them to download and share on social media if they want.   

Virtual Tables says its digital autograph platform can serve one-on-one intimate sessions and host up to tens of thousands of guests at a time . The company previously supported virtual events for the New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys.   

Former star NFL tight end Vernon Davis has joined at-home connect e d g y m s t a r tup J A X J O X a s a n i n v e s t o r a n d b r a n d p artner. The company’s products include free weight and kettlebells with built-in sensors to track workout data such as reps, sets, average power exertion, calories burned and heart rate.

JAXJOX’s complete InteractiveStudio smart gym stands about 80 inches tall, including its 43-inch 4K touchscreen to view metrics and stream workouts. The product costs $2,499 plus a monthly $39 membership. Davis , who made two Pro Bowls in 14 NFL seasons, will create workouts for JAXJOX, participate in live Q&As and share fitness tips with community members.

Since his NFL career ended in 2019, Davis has acted in Hollywood films such as Gasoline Alley with Bruce Willis and Muti starring Morgan Freeman. His investment in JAXJOX follows the company’s addition of four-time U.S. Olympic gold medal winner Michael Duane Johnson to its advisory board last month.

At-home fitness startup Kabata also makes sensor-embedded free weights. Kabata secured funding last month from English soccer star Daniel Sturridge, former NBA player Zaza Pachulia, Golden State Warriors executive Kirk Lacob and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert.

Techstars' current accelerator in Indianapolis also features two smart gym startups designed to reinvent the in-facility weightlifting experience.  RepOne similarly inserts sensors on the weights themselves, while EvenLift deploys AI-enabled cameras to track a user’s exercise, the weight they’re lifting, their number of reps and their form.

“Now [people are] coming back to sort of dumb, big box gyms, and they expect that same experience now they had at home,’’ Jordan Fliegel, the managing director of Indianapolis' Techstars, recently told SportTechie. “...These gyms realize that they need to evolve.''