Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2019 – A roundup of some of the key sports technology stories you need to know, including SportTechie’s own content and stories from around the web.
- UEFA has partnered with Japanaese video game producer Konami to launch a new esports tournament. eEuro 2020 competitors will be play with national teams in Konami’s PES 2020 soccer game. All 55 of UEFA’s national associations will be represented in the tournament, which will kick off in November and ends with a final competition in London in July next year. Winners of the esports tournament will receive and cash prize and tickets to the final of the UEFA 2020 European Football Championship, which will be played on July 12 at Wembley Stadium. Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer series is a rival to the FIFA series published by Electronic Arts.
- Superliga Argentina has signed sports data provider Genius Sports in order to combat match fixing and betting-related data piracy. Genius Sports’ bet monitoring system will track global odds movements and provide educational workshops to players, coaches, referees and administrators. Elsewhere in the soccer world, the English Football League recently apologized to a fan after he was asked to stop texting at a Hull City match because security mistakenly believed him to be delivering unauthorized data to manipulate betting markets.
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- Montreal-based sports analytics firm Sportlogiq has launched a player performance partnership with Toronto F.C. Sportlogiq extracts data from broadcast feeds, searching for insights to help match analysis, opposition scouting and player recruitment. The company is also the NHL’s optical tracking partner and provides its data insights to several NFL and NBA teams. “Broadcast tracking data will serve as the foundation of recruitment analytics in the near-future and we’re excited to be one of the first soccer clubs in the world with access to this cutting-edge technology,” said Devin Pleuler, senior manager of analytics at Toronto F.C., in a press release.
- The Overwatch League had released its 2020 schedule, which will be the first season where each team will host matches in their home cities. The 2020 season will be the league’s third. The OWL has teams based across the U.S., Canada, Paris, London, China, and South Korea. The New York Excelsior, owned by New York Mets COO Jeff Wilpon, will host the first slate of games inside the Hammerstein Ballroom located in midtown Manhattan. The OWL’s transition to a home and away format comes after it trialed homestands in Dallas and Atlanta this past season.
- Danish soccer club Brondby is using Panasonic facial recognition software developed inside its stadium. Panasonic cameras installed at the stadium gates will search for the faces of people who may have been banned from the venue. According to Panasonic, the system can recognize faces from photographs taken 10 years ago even when part of the face is concealed by sunglasses. “The system will significantly increase our efficiency in identifying blacklisted persons at our entrance gates, so we can ensure they do not enter the stadium,” said Jesper Jorgensen, managing director of Brondby IF, in a press release.
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