Techno Football

As a die-hard sports fan, I support the San Francisco 49ers of the NFL, the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics of the NBA, the Los Angeles Kings of the NHL, the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants of Major League Baseball and last but not the least, I’m a rabid alumnus of my alma mater, the De La Salle University Green Archers.

Whenever one of the above mentioned teams wins or loses, I check the statistics. What was the margin of victory or defeat. The key statistics of the game.

In the German Bundesliga, they’ve started using algorithm and artificial intelligence for their match data and statistics. Information that can be very useful to anyone in the organisation, from the front office to the statistician.

Each team in the Bundesliga has a multi-camera system of 20 cameras able to cover the whole pitch. The cameras can cover every spot where each player is at. The system, they say, can compute probabilities of a goal score from a certain space on the field.

The information generated by the system can be useful for teams as analytics. The pieces of data and information can be used to craft set pieces and strategy. For the football analysts and media, it’s used to either praise or criticise a player or a team. For the casual ordinary fan, it’s ammunition to be a sudden armchair sports analyst who thinks he or she knows everything.