The Seattle Reign FC, the professional women’s soccer club that has played for five seasons at Memorial Stadium, is dropping Seattle from its name and heading south to Tacoma, the team announced Wednesday. The move is turning one Seattle venture capitalist into a minority owner. An open letter to fans and supporters, signed by team owners Bill and Teresa Predmore, said that it is with “great sadness” that the team’s time at the facility at Seattle Center has come to an end and that home matches for the 2019 NWSL season will be played about 35 miles away at Cheney Stadium.… Read More
News Brief: Computer scientists have trained a neural network to transform the action from pre-recorded videos of soccer games into immersive augmented-reality “holograms” you can shrink down onto a tabletop. The artificial-intelligence system developed by the University of Washington’s Konstantinos Rematas and colleagues analyzed 12,000 player models from FIFA, Electronic Arts’ soccer simulation game. Once the system learned to conceptualize the 3-D motions of soccer players, it could convert YouTube videos into 3-D renderings viewable via Microsoft’s HoloLens headset. Someday it may convert live World Cup matches on the fly. But for now, you’ll just have to check out the… Read More
TAYLOR’S TAKE ON THE WEEK IN SPORTS TECH: Inflating a soccer ball or football with the exact amount of air doesn’t seem like a huge deal. But whether it was the controversy that arose from “Deflategate” or the damage an overinflated soccer ball can have on a teenager’s head, accurate gauge pressure is actually quite important. That’s why TorrX is finding early traction with its high-tech ball pump that has a built-in gauge and LED screen, making it easy to quickly inflate or deflate a ball to a precise pounds per square inch (PSI) measurement. Customers from around the world at… Read More
Jason Flick isn’t a player on the pitch for the Seattle Sounders FC. But he will be representing the team in competition this season, and he’s even ready to take on some of the pros who play soccer for a living. Flick is a pro in his own right, as an eports gamer, and he’s one of a handful of players chosen to compete in eMLS, a new competitive gaming league organized in partnership with EA Sports. “I’ve been playing ‘FIFA’ on console for about 10 years, creating content on YouTube for over five years now,” said Flick, who is… Read More
Amazon is getting serious about streaming the world’s best soccer matches. Bloomberg reported Friday that Amazon will submit a bid in next month’s auction for rights to stream Premier League soccer. The Telegraph reported Thursday that Amazon is consulting “industry experts” as it prepares to make its bid. Rumors of Amazon’s interest in streaming Premier League matches have been swirling for months. It shows Amazon’s commitment to streaming live sports; the tech giant paid a reported $50 million to stream Thursday Night Football NFL games this season, and has inked a variety of other deals for sports streaming rights that add… Read More
