The NBA announced a new deal with Sportradar and Second Spectrum on Thursday to expand the distribution of its player tracking and stats, per NBA.com.
Sportradar, headquartered in Minneapolis, will distribute statistical data globally, and spread real-time data to betting houses.
Sportvu has been replaced by Second Spectrum for player tracking information and will install cameras in every league arena this season. The cameras are used to track player movement, including how much ground they cover, where they touch the ball most and the ability to guard the pick-and-roll.
The NBA is the very first American professional league to use player tracking throughout a full season. Commissioner Adam Silver is doing whatever possible to help progress legal sports betting that adheres to US gambling laws, although the current sports gambling applies to only international bookmakers.
Analytics and statistical data has become more popular over the years, and every team uses data in some fashion as a core part of its competitive programs.
Sportradar's managing director of digital sports Ulrich Harmuth is ecstatic about the new deal, and says he can't wait until everyone can find a place for what the data brings to the table.
If you just consider how sports data was presented or what was available five years ago, the amount of data is simply exploding. In these days when you have tracking information and you know the exact position of every player on the court, you have a huge amount of data. But the data itself doesn't have a meaning yet. So we will invest significantly into science and machine learning tools in order to distill story telling elements and meaning out of the core data that makes it accessible to the fans.
Second Spectrum CEO Rajiv Maheswaran is also excited about the future of the deal, and believes it can do great things for sports in general.
We're thrilled to partner with a forward-thinking league like the NBA. As a former professor, it's great to live in a time when machines can deeply understand sports. We're excited to bring this state-of-the-art technology to the entire league and its partners.
The new tracking and data analysis will begin in the 2017-2018 season
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