For sports fans watching a game, it is inevitable to sometimes wonder what it would be like to experience the action first-hand. Especially when that action is exhilarating, dangerous, and involves pucks traveling at speeds of over 100 miles per hour.
Well, fortunately for hockey fans, the National Hockey League has partnered with GoPro cameras to create promotional point-of-view footage. The unique videos will also be used as a supplement during game coverage, altogether giving hockey fans a rare glimpse at how the athletes themselves experience the action.
The simulated content taken by the GoPro cameras will be used in campaigns to promote the NHL season. The footage will provide fans with an idea of what their favorite players actually see while performing specific skills such as skating, stickhandling, and shooting.
Best of all, with this new partnership between the NHL and GoPro, the opportunities for great new content for fans to consume are abundant. For instance, if a recorded player scores during a game, the TV coverage can instantly show relevant recorded content, adding another dimension to fan involvement. NBC Sports in the U.S. and Rogers in Canada are the TV right holders for the GoPro footage, and the NHL as well as GoPro will use this footage on their websites.
Although we will not see live NHL game footage just yet as the players will not be fitted to wear the cameras, this is a giant step to incorporating POV video technology into mainstream sports. We saw this many years ago in baseball with Catcher-Cam. Now, other sports leagues like the NFL, MLS, and Barclays Premier League in England have adopted the GoPro in order to take footage of training and record the referee’s point-of-view.
While most leagues can fit the referees with cameras without too much trouble, since they are not usually caught in the thick of the action, the next step surely has to be safely fitting players with these cameras for real games. We have seen POV footage from quarterbacks during training, but imagine the content that could be created from recording the field of view of an NFL quarterback as a blitz sets up in front of him. Imagine the reaction of the fans. Not only would it help teams and officials for training purposes, but it would also greatly increase game viewership.
The GoPro provides endless possibilities for pure, unique content in the world of sports. It taps into the passion of the fans, giving us a sense of adrenaline you would only get if you were actually on the field. In this day and age, where video content is highly treasured by business and fans alike, GoPro technology will undoubtedly enhance the way we experience sports.