Artificial intelligence is revolutionising in many sectors. One of them is sport which is being taken to the whole new level thanks to its multiple systems focused for example on improving the performance of athletes and coaches. AI in sports is definitely a new reality that is having a significant impact on many of its aspects.
Those systems have been created to change the way things are being done in sport. In a sector that is increasingly moving towards professionalisation in areas. Those types of systems provide a tremendous capacity in terms of efficiency and performance. There are many different areas in the sports industry where AI is beginning to play a fundamental role. Some of these include: Marketing, medical services, performance of athletes, scouts, sports refereeing or even automated journalism.
Hawk-Eye could be a great example of such system. It helps resolving controversial moments during the game. Cameras record, temporal and visual data, which the system automatically processes. Giving such system detailed information about the rules of the particular discipline or the playing area will create a tool that will be able to spot any abnormalities in real time. For instance, a ball going out of bounds. This system was used to support referees’ job, but on Grand Slam Australian Open tournament in 2021 for COVID reasons, a vast amount of Hawk-eye cameras completely replaced the line referees, instantly calling out balls, as well as decisions on serves hitting the net. This system is also able to archive data, which can be later used to create statistics or analyze players’ behaviour.
Another helpful system can be SAS, which is used, by one of the analytics companies, SciSports. The company supports clubs in finding players for specific positions and developing tactical and training objectives. SciSports works with elite football clubs in the whole world but mainly in Europe to help them select the best players and build optimal teams. SAS system analyses more than 1,500 matches in 210 leagues per week, using machine learning to provide the estimated value, condition and potential of more than 200,000 players. The company uses SAS Visa platform and their own BallJames camera system to create a 3D video of the recently played matches. SAS enables a very detailed analysis of players’ performance. All the collected data can be used to identify underrated players or new rising stars. All that by comparing statistics of a particular player with every other player in their league.
To conclude, according to the latest AI research, a great advantage of using such systems in sport is that they apply a certain objectivity to the analysis of the game without the need to rely on a human expert who might get different results depending on factors such as experience, context or knowledge.
Also one of the biggest advantages of artificial intelligence systems in sport is the large amount of data that can be processed, since, logically, machines have a greater capacity to store and evaluate huge amounts of information, which makes them a better analysts than human beings could ever become.
Sources:
–https://www.sas.com/en_us/23289/2323/sas-viya-on-azure-marketplace.html
–https://bodyler.com/innovations/how-does-the-hawk-eye-system-work/
It is worth noting that at this year’s World Cup we have the opportunity to see the automatic offside system for the first time. Initially, there was a lot of controversy surrounding the system due to how overly accurate it is. It detects an offside even when going behind the back lines with just the foot or arm. However I think it makes game a lot more fair and accurate and there are certianly there are no doubts if there was an offense or not.