This past weekend marked the kick off of the 21st season of Major League Soccer. Audi of America and the MLS introduced the Audi Player Index on opening day, March 6th. The new player tracking technology will be a part of every team and every game for all of the 2016 season.
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The North American professional soccer league is drawing big names from Europe and South America, and now they are drawing big sponsorships from overseas as well. The American branch of Audi, the German automotive giant, signed a four-year deal with MLS before the start of the 2015 season. The introduction of the Audi Player Index this year hopes to boost the profile of their partnership, as well as create more fan engagement around the league.
This high tech player tracking technology first debuted at the 2015 Audi Cup, a small tournament featuring some of the biggest clubs in Europe, including the German giants, Bayern Munich. The MLS will use this technology to track and evaluate almost every aspect of the game, from every player on the field.
Audi Player Index is able to evaluate 90 different facets of the game as well as track 2,000 unique player movements, in almost real time. The stats that the Index collects are relatively standard and are currently tracked around the soccer world: goals, assists, crosses, saves, passes, challenges, tackles, and many more. What separates this technology is the secondary data that is incorporated along with these stats that provide every player on the field with an individual Audi Player Index.
All of the data points that are collected are placed within a frame of reference based on where, when and how they were preformed during the game. Player’s position is taken into account; where they are in terms of the team’s tactical formation. Location on the field where the event takes place is quantified as well to determine the overall score. Lastly, and maybe most importantly is the “match specifics,” how important was that goal or tackle in determining the outcome of the game.
After every game, every player who played will receive their overall Audi Player Index score. At the end of the season the Audi Player Index Award will be given to the player with the best overall score; as long as he logged the proper amount of overall time on the field required to be eligible.
Fans will be able to track this data in nearly real time very soon in a variety of ways. The Audi Player Index of every player will be available on an app, during television broadcasts, as well as on social media.
Major League Soccer and Audi of America hope they have an engaging product on their hands. In the age of continued advanced statistics and analytics for sports, the Audi Player Index seems to fit right in. But we will certainly be watching this season closely to see if teams value this player evaluation metric. The hope for now is to create more fan engagement as well as an easy and new way to quantify who the best player(s) are on the field. The metric could prove to be beneficial for fans that are new to the game as well as die-hards, helping them to quantify some of the more nuanced things players do throughout a match that leads to victory.