The Alliance of American Football debuted its first week of football and its much-hyped fan engagement app over the weekend. MGM is an investor in the technology, and the app gave an early glimpse of the potential of its proprietary predictive platform.
The free-to-download AAF app provided a live stream of three of the weekend’s first four contests and introduced a predictive game for fans. Each on-field player was rendered on an illustrated football field using the real-time data transmitted from his wearable device. The representation looked similar, but more refined, than what the NFL produced for its experiment publishing live tracking data during last month’s Pro Bowl. Every player appeared as a circle with his number and position. (A desktop version was similar in content but lacked the ID for each player. It did, however, have play-by-play info and stats.)
For each play, users could predict whether the play would be a run or pass, whether it would go to the left, middle, or right, and then if the play might result in a first down or touchdown. The AAF app calculated the odds of each option before the snap and assigned a point value. As users made correct choices, they racked up points.
The feedback on social media was generally positive for the game, although there were two recurring (and fixable) complaints. Several users noted that the app technology was several seconds ahead of the TV broadcast (which happened for the NFL in its Pro Bowl demo as well). And there was no clear goal for accruing points. Fans would periodically advance to the next level, but that too had no obvious objective or prize for redemption.
Most likely, the AAF was using the first week as a test run. A fantasy game structure will be added, as well as the opportunity for in-play betting. That’s why MGM got involved, both for AAF fan engagement and for the possibility of adapting the technology for other sports. The AAF is a bet on data as much as it is on football.
“One of the things we’re building is a football league,” AAF co-founder Charlie Ebersol said last fall, “but on the other side, we’re building a technology company that allows direct and, for the first time ever, fully real-time data streaming out of the game for what we call Stats 2.0.”
The AAF’s engineering team has provided a number of open-source APIs for users to download and have provided some context to their development work. The league held a joint training camp in San Antonio, for instance, which enabled test runs of its wearable technology during scrimmages. Those practices don’t always simulate competitive play, however, so the engineers also invited locals to play full-length flag football games with stats and video alongside the camp. Those flag football games, they wrote, provided “by far . . . the best opportunities to test our systems.”
The inaugural two games on Saturday night reportedly drew 2.9 million viewers in regional coverage on CBS, meaning the audience of the concurrent AAF action outdrew that evening’s NBA broadcast on ABC.
The AAF won’t return to CBS until its championship game on Apr. 27, however. Sunday’s two games were carried by cable on the CBS Sports Network and the NFL Network. TNT and B/R Live will provide some coverage from rival Turner during the season. But all games not on CBS Sports Network will also be streamed live right in the AAF app.