SPORTS TECHNOLOGY OF THE YEAR
aiScout – ai.io
Any boy or girl that has kicked a football as a child has dreamt of one day lifting the FA Cup, or winning the league in front of thousands of adoring fans.
But, aside from the requisite skills, the one thing that stands in their way, is being spotted.
The AiSCOUT platform is revolutionising the opportunities for aspiring players, scouts and clubs, using AI to find amateur footballers globally, through a mobile phone.
And it really works…
Outstanding beta & MVP testing resulted in 77 amateur players being trialled & signed for professional football clubs, as well as being selected for national squads – 47 of these players trialling in 2022 alone. The player and scout app has been proven to deliver 100% efficiency gain for scouts, as well as uncovering talent that simply would never have been found using traditional methods.
AiSCOUT is being successfully used by professional clubs including Chelsea FC, Burnley FC, and amateur players in 125 countries.
In September 2022, AiSCOUT was signed by Chelsea FC as its Official Academy Recruitment Partner, with the platform to become an integral part of the club’s recruitment and scouting process for academy players over the next five years.
Bidstack Sports
Bidstack Sports revolutionises traditional models for sports fan engagement, sponsorship revenues and media valuations by enabling professional sports rights-holders to commercialise their virtual sponsorship inventory in parallel with real-world commercial partnerships.
Our proprietary SDK technology circumvents these limitations, enabling sports simulation games to deliver premium branded content seamlessly into contextually relevant spaces within gameplay. The technology supports rights-holders and their commercial partners to instantaneously deploy messaging to targeted audiences at scale while ensuring that content remains relevant across regions, languages and gameplay styles.
Supported by full reporting and analytics capabilities, rights-holders can demonstrate placements’ immediate and ongoing value, establishing sustainable complementary revenue sources.
Bidstack Sports recently partnered with StatusPRO, creators of NFL PRO ERA, integrating the technology within the 30 replicated virtual stadiums for each NFL franchise in-game, providing the teams with a dedicated platform to dynamically manage their in-stadium content, unlocking a new frontier for fan engagement and commercial partnerships.
The Washington Commanders, an iconic 90-year-old NFL franchise, broke new ground as the first NFL club to utilise this partnership to synchronise its real-world and virtual stadium offerings within NFL PRO ERA, enabling the team to distribute content calendar programming directly to audiences in the best-selling VR title.
Digitally Enhanced Dasherboards (DED) – Supponor and NHL
Supponor, the leader in virtual advertising for live sports, collaborated with the NHL to deploy its next-generation Digitally Enhanced Dasherboard (DED) technology at the latest NHL season, powered by Supponor AIR® technology platform.
Supponor specialises in software-based virtual advertising solutions using AI and machine learning, serving a wide variety of sports events worldwide. The DED system was designed to overcome the challenges posed by hockey’s fast-paced nature and importance of the arena to the game play, by allowing static dasherboards to display animated and targeted advertisements to local and international audiences without disrupting the game’s traditional environment.
The DED system is helping NHL and all its clubs and rightsholder partners achieve positive business impacting commercial results through the deployment of a historic league-wide signage solution, that combines enhanced dasherboard with on ice slot signage, delivered in up to 15 concurrent games per night and 40 game broadcasts per week. Industry experts and NHL executives have praised its level of innovation, viewing it as a revolutionary development in enhancing brand engagement in live sports events.
DED being the recipient of the 2023 Sports Business Journal Sports Breakthrough of the Year Award and that it was also a 2023 Sports Emmy finalist.
EuroLeague TV VR – Yerba Buena VR
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EuroLeague TV VR is the App where EuroLeague Basketball fans from all around the world can enjoy Live games in VR in a fully personalized and interactive way, where the user has the control of the experience; being able to choose choose between multiple camera angles and switch from 360° and 180° cameras to 2D feeds seamlessly. 14 games of season 2022-23 were streamed Live in VR, including 4 games of the Playoffs and the entire Final Four. Fans from more than 40 countries enjoyed the experience from multiple devices that include VR headsets, mobile phones, tablets and PC/Macs. EuroLeague Basketball and YBVR made this immersive experience possible.
PitchPower x Football Foundation
Premier League, The FA and Government’s charity, the Football Foundation, has developed PitchPower, an app that will transform the quality of grass pitches across England.
90% of matches are played on grass, most of which aren’t properly maintained. 150,000 games are cancelled annually due to unplayable pitches, so millions of opportunities to play are lost
Until now, a limited number of pitch inspections have been carried out in person, by reps with pens and clipboards, and maintenance carried out by volunteers, most of whom are men of an older demographic.
PitchPower is easy to use, hosts in-app guidance, to allow every club across the country to complete their own pitch inspections, receive expert assessment reports with maintenance recommendations and access to training and funding. It has also been rolled out to Rugby League, Rugby Union and Cricket, meaning the same great benefits for these sports too.
Over three times the number of inspections can now be completed, pitch quality with transform and 150,000 more games will be played every year.
Relo Metrics
Relo Metrics provides a media valuation strategy that encompassed the entire sponsorship activation footprint, including both broadcast and social media platforms.
The distinctive and innovative aspect of Relo Metrics’ solution lies in their sponsorship intelligence platform. This platform enables teams, leagues, brands, agencies and media companies to gather comprehensive insights, which are essential for selling, retaining, and expanding partnership revenue. By utilizing Relo Metrics’ platform, clients are able to analyze sponsor exposures in an organized and easily understandable manner, aligning with their data-centric strategy.
Ticketmaster Sport
Thanks to Ticketmaster’s away digital ticketing technology where all tickets are sold and fulfilled completely digitally, this headache is now a thing of the past for clients working with Ticketmaster. Gone are the days of handling fulfilment with physical tickets and spending hours dealing with away tickets. Everything can now be digitised for clubs and fans alike.
“Something we have been waiting for, This game was so easy from a ticket office point of view. No printing, No postage and on the day no issues at all.”
Gem Olive, Head of Ticketing at Oxford United F.C. commented during the trial against Lincoln F.C.
“This has to be the way forward for selling away tickets. It saves time, money and labour while also making it easier for the supporter purchasing the tickets. There was no need to print thousands of tickets in advance, we had no duplicate tickets at all to deal with and absolutely no collections.”
Chris Brewer, Head of Media and Ticketing, Peterborough F.C
