Sony Sports CEO Rufus Hack joins TheStreet to discuss how what the company has in store for the National Football League.
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00:00Sony recently became the official technology partner of the NFL.
00:04What new opportunities does this unlock for the league?
00:11So we're incredibly privileged within our Sony sports business to work with 23 of the top 25
00:17sports leagues globally and extending our partnership with the NFL is something we're
00:22incredibly excited about. The NFL obviously being one of the iconic global sports properties,
00:29we're really excited to help them across a number of things. So firstly we're going to be
00:33installing our optical tracking cameras in all 32 of the NFL stadiums. And what's that going to
00:41mean? That means that we can effectively collect sub one second latency skeletal data of all of the
00:48NFL matches from next season. We'll be using that for a variety of things. The first thing that
00:54we're going to be really focused on is how can we help to improve the product on the pitch
01:00through making the game fairer, safer and in many cases quicker. And so the first application of
01:07that is going to be around automating the line to game. So we're effectively going to be able to
01:13automate whether a first down was made and whether the full 10 yards has been achieved. But then
01:21once we actually collect the skeletal data and the ball tracking data, there's huge
01:28other ways in which that can potentially be used. So that can potentially be used to look
01:34about whether a player was in bounds when they caught a touchdown pass. It can be looked to see
01:38whether there was interference on the quarterback. And so we're very excited about how we can
01:44continue to build on this relationship with the NFL to really roll out new ways, as I said,
01:50to make the game fairer, safer and quicker. As part of this partnership, Sony is also
01:56developing headsets for team coaches. How will these headsets enhance the game? And when can
02:04we expect this to roll out? So you're exactly right, Conway. We're going to be introducing
02:12the Sony headsets from still to be exactly finalized, but likely from the start of next
02:18season. So we have Sony headsets for all of the coaches and obviously improving the audio quality
02:26and the speed of transmission. But there's lots of other things that we're doing as part of this
02:32wider strategic partnership. We touched on some of the officiating improvements that we're looking
02:38to work with the league on. We're obviously doing the headsets, as you referenced, but we're also
02:43looking to use this data that's collected for really new immersive fan engagement experiences.
02:48So I think that you're aware that we did something last season with the NFL for one
02:54of the London series games where we recreated one of the games in Toy Story IP. And the numbers
03:01around that were quite incredible. We had over 4 million views on ESPN and Disney Plus with an
03:07average of over a million. The average age of the viewer was actually 14 versus whatever it is,
03:13mid 50s on CBS or NBC. And actually, 62% of people had never seen the game and never watched
03:20the game before. So it was genuinely additive. And so we're actually looking to do that again
03:26over the next month or so. But actually, this game is going to be recreated. One of the Cowboys games
03:31at the start of December is going to be recreated in Simpsons IP. So really trying to use the data
03:37and working with the league for how do you create new, more immersive and participative
03:43sports experiences for younger sports fans.