Feature Article - Game changing insights through collaboration - 2018

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The world of football is getting more and more competitive, with clubs vying with each other for the best players, the highest rankings and the most fans. In this market, technology is becoming a powerful weapon to improve the game – and the business – of football organisations all over the world. And this is big business – the European football market size in 2016/2017 was €25.5 billion, up one billion from 2015/2016, and in fact matchday attendance was at its highest level for 60 tears in the 2017/18 season*.

Hikvision is working with partners Johan Sports, UScoutfor and Dotcomsport to provide an integrated solution to provide sports data monitoring and analysis tools to help football teams to maximise their presence, both on the pitch and off. This comes hot on the heels of Hikvision’s sponsorship of Dutch football team Ajax in 2017 and the work with them on team performance management (see article).

Together these partners, who are all leading innovators

in the respective fields, offer an integrated sports solution that is unique in the market. Separate elements have been available now for a while, but the power of implementing them all together has not yet been known – until now.

Hikvision
Hikvision provides the eyes of the system – with a 24MP PanoVu camera positioned centrally on the pitch sideline to literally catch every angle of the game. The 24MP PanoVu (DS-2CD6A64F) provides a full 180 degree view of the pitch, meaning that all the action can be seen, wherever the players are on the pitch.

The images from the camera are very clear – with four lenses of 6MP each, making a total of 24MP - one of the highest definition PanoVu cameras in the industry. The cameras have a frame per second rate of 30, meaning that nothing will be missed. All the movements during the trainings or matches will be recorded and live streamed by the camera.

Future solutions will also take advantage of a brand new 32MP PanoVu camera, which will make the images even more high resolution. The camera also sports Hikvision’s cutting edge deep learning technology, which can recognise the player’s and track them on the field. This data will further enhance the accuracy and value of the solution as a whole.

Johan Sports
Johan Sports offers an affordable and user friendly performance analytics system for sports teams. Every player wears a GPS tracker to measure the movements and heart rate during training or matches. This measured data is visualised in a personal online analysis environment for coaches, analysts and players. Johan Sports combines the GPS data with sport science knowledge. Therefore users can easily optimise trainings, prevent injuries and monitor the fitness of the team and individual players.

This is the first integral performance analysis platform in which the coach can gather and analyse all relevant GPS data together with heart rate data. Trainers, coaches and analysts all over the world use it to get the most out of each player.

UScoutfor
The UScoutfor software platform uses the data stream from the cameras to stitch the four images together and dewarp the video, with TNO technology (Netherlands organisation for applied scientific research). Dewarping refers to the process of perspective correction of an image, to reverse the effects of geometric distortions caused by the camera lens.

The software also contains a virtual director, which replaces the need of a physical camera operator on site. Broadcasters and event organisers can have a fully automated application where the software automatically follows (pan, tilt and zoom) that part of a live event that is most interesting to viewers. The software can also automatically recognise certain ‘events’ – for example, a goal, so viewers don’t miss the highlights, even when they are not there.

With the real time distribution network and apps UScoutfor can send out push notifications to all fans with clips of goals or other highlights. It’s also possible to use the video from Uscoutfor for third party analysing software.

Dotcomsport
All the data from Hikvision, Johan Sports and UScoutfor is sent to the Dotcomsport platform for integrated analysis. This provides the most intuitive player development system for the soccer world. Dotcomsport is a global software company which provides products and services developed for the sports market.

Dotcomsport’s Player Development System gives complete perspective of the organisation, with clear graphical overviews providing direct insight into what is happening within the club. Through the platform, clubs can coordinate players and staff members, plan games, practices, evaluations and record every detail during the game.

Currently, the platform is used in 15 countries, with over 300 football organisations already using it.

Powerful combination
This is definitely a good example of a combination which has more value than the sum of its parts. To provide all these benefits, large amounts of data need to be gathered from good quality, reliable sources. But this information needs to be analysed for it to be really powerful – and processed in order to inform and delight its various users.

Peter Guan, Channel Sales and Marketing Director for Hikvision Europe, says: “At Hikvision we are proud to be able to offer complete solutions, giving our customers the best options for them. This means working closely with our partners, and this collaboration is a great example of this. Our 24MP PanoVu cameras provide clear images and raw data that fuels the analytical engine provided by Dotcomsport, along with the motion data from Johan Sports. They also provide the source for UScoutfor’s optimised content for users.”

The sports world has not been left behind in the big data revolution. The combination of metrics from the field brought together can provide great insights – both for management and training analysis and to enhance the game experience for fans. Hikvison’s collaboration with Johan Sports, UScoutfor and Dotcomsport will deliver a new integrated solution to bring football to the next level.

*_Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance 2018

Click here to see more about how this collaboration can brings sports to the next level.

Click here to find out more about Johan Sports

Click here to find out more about UScoutfor

Click here to find out more about Dotcomsport