INDUSTRY BLOG: 2018 Men’s European Qualification Championship game employing Playgineering sports technologies

For those who didn’t have a chance to read my last blog post, the Latvian Handball Federation and Playgineering Systems have signed a three-year contract for unique sports technology utilisation for all Latvian National Handball team games. We didn’t have to wait too long and the first official game was here, to make things even more special, the Latvian National Team was playing against the Olympic Gold Medallists, Denmark!

And We’re On… the first National Level Handball game using Playgineering Systems’ technology! 

The stakes were quite high and as we all know first impressions can’t be changed. Playgineering Systems’ team came up with a plan to display all of our latest technology solutions. During this match we provided coaches with game tracking videos captured from the arena ceiling.

The unique game tracking angle is captured with four cameras that algorithmically create unified video viewed on one screen. Without any tracking tags attached to player uniforms or game balls our system is capable to detect real-time game statistics and other very valuable data points. Let’s dive little deeper into this. Playgineering Systems video technology generates a heat map accounting for each individual player’s movement on the court, taken shots, given passes and other important statistical points. The accounted statistics is afterwards filtered between half-times and totals for each of the partaking teams.

Unlike the typical game statistics data we provide coaches with information that wasn’t available before existence of this type of sport game tracking technology. Coaches can analyze the distances their team players have ran, they can see specific amount of passes given and received per player bases and an exact time player spent on the court.

Here’s a comment from Latvian National Handballteam coach, Ugis Vikstrems, quoting:

We’re at an interesting point in growth of sports technologies worldwide. Everyone knows it exists but true utilization of one is applied only by few. Latvian Handball Federation has been very fortunate to begin adaption processes realizing the incredible opportunities technology can provide us with. The immediacy of data, the new angles of the game analyses and that is only the tip of the iceberg…

Another step is taken towards embedding latest sports technologies in real competition settings.

As you have probably noted, I’ll keep you informed on all Playgineering Systems latest events. Please feel free to comment, reach out to me, I’d be happy to spark a conversation regarding sports technologies, perhaps you’re interested in utilizing ones for your sports team, I’m available to discuss implementation, processes, costs and other important elements, just sent me a note. Thank you again for reading and we’ll connect on my next post.