Digitization Is Upon Us — The Biggest Change In Sports In Over 100 Years
The widespread collection and utilization of data is already shifting the landscape, and this is only the beginning.
This weekend at the NBA All-Star Game, we’ll witness the starting points of a new revolution taking place in sports. More than ever, everything in sports is becoming digital and measurable. This will fundamentally change everything we know about the way athletes perform — and the arenas in which they compete.
Call it the digitization of sports. Digitization is a big word that’s thrown around a lot today, but when it’s used with sports, it’s truly transformational. It means that everything we do in a sport can now be captured as a piece of data. Data like we’ve never experienced it before. The tiniest details of play — from an athlete’s elbow angle on a free throw to the vertical on a slam dunk — can be measured and broadcast in real time.
Everything we know and experience about sports is about to change. We saw the first example of this two weeks ago at X Games Aspen.
Intel put small, puck-sized devices on the snowboards for the Big Air and Men’s Ski Slopestyle events. Everything about these events was measured: the height, rotation, speed and even the landing force of each of the athletes. All of this data was relayed in real time to the fans on the mountain and viewers at home.
All of this data creates not only an entirely new viewing experience, it also gives the athletes data they’ve never had before, which will allow them to train and improve at much faster rates.
Most athletes — regardless of the sport — play based on how they feel. Athletes adjust their game, shift their position and change their approach mostly by how they are feeling in the moment. We can now put precise data behind those feelings — by using the latest biosensing technologies attached right to the athlete or their gear. This means we can improve training and improve performance.
I’m an avid runner, and I wish I had this technology long ago. I’ve had two knee surgeries, a broken ankle and a stress fracture. I was running one day and my leg basically just snapped. I think of how data could have avoided this. Technology could have been monitoring my gait — letting me know that my body was compensating for something that wasn’t right.
We’re talking about a way to hone workouts like never before. We’ll be able to tailor everything from nutrition plans to sleep patterns to ensure athletes are fit, healthy and performing at their best. With precise data, athletes can potentially push themselves further — and more safely.
I believe that this digitization will eventually work its way into the judging process as well. Did the ball hit the ground? Did he step over the line? How many rotations did a snowboarder just achieve? At the X Games, we heard the judges questioning if the snowboarders made a “soft landing.” Now with digitization, we’ll know that the athlete actually came down at 20 Gs. That’s far from a soft landing — that’s near amazing.
This weekend at the NBA All-Star Game, we’re going to witness how the digitization of sports will revolutionize our viewing experiences. We’re going to take the entire court and turn it in to a series of “voxels.”
(Ok, what’s a voxel?)
Think of it as taking the complete volume of any arena and breaking it down in to a collection of small cubes. Once you have that complete set of voxels, you can use a large computer to put yourself anywhere on the court or the field and view 360 degrees around you. Imagine being able to witness a slam dunk from the defender’s perspective or the defensive rush from the quarterback’s perspective. Amazing, right? Well that’s what we’ll see this weekend at the All-Star slam dunk contest and during the NBA All-Star Game. We’ll see the slam dunks, blocks and steals from every angle, every position.
Are you seeing now how this will change almost every sport — from every angle?
And it will continue to get better. The technology will continue to improve. It will get smaller and smaller, crunch the data faster, and be used practically everywhere. Whatever the sport, digitization is a game changer, and what we’re about to experience is nothing short of amazing. So join me and the rest of the world this weekend at the All-Star Game for the biggest change in sports in decades: the digitization of sports!
