Rufus Hack, CEO of Sony Sports, joins TheStreet to explain.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Do you think Major League Baseball is inching closer to incorporating Hawkeye's technology
00:06and automate balls and an automated balls-and-strike system?
00:12I think there is a direction of travel that we're seeing in all sports.
00:15It's happening in cricket, in tennis, in soccer, in all of the big U.S. sports where people
00:20recognize that at an aggregate view, the technology can make better decisions than individuals
00:31or than humans.
00:33And so ultimately, there is an ambition from all of the world's top sports to make their
00:38sport quicker, fairer, and more balanced.
00:45And so I think the application of these technologies is a direction of travel.
00:50Now we need to be very sensitive to that, that it's done in an incremental way and that
00:55it doesn't upset the speed of the game, the traditions of the game, or how people, fans
01:01in particular, really love the passion of the game.
01:04But for us, what we're seeing is a real movement in that direction.
01:09I mean, we've been doing this through Hawkeye for 20 years.
01:12We started doing line calling in tennis 20 years ago.
01:16We started doing decision review systems in cricket 18 years ago.
01:20This has been a long journey for us where we've incremented to introduce automated officiating
01:26in lots of sports.
01:27And I think we're now seeing this being really taken up by the U.S. sports.
01:32And as I said, we're having the conversations with the NFL about automated line to game
01:36and other applications.
01:38We're having the conversations with the NBA about how they can use it potentially around
01:43the goaltending side of things.
01:44We're having conversations with hockey around automating offsides.
01:48There's conversations, as you say, with the MLB around how they think about automated
01:54balls and strikes.
01:55And for us, this is a direction of travel that sport is moving.
01:59We never want to take away the passion of the game and the things that make the game
02:03so special.
02:04But if technology can play a small part in making the game quicker and fairer, then for
02:09us, that's the real privilege for us to play that role.
02:12So for you, the slower movement toward this is not really about the argument about retaining
02:20human element or the fact that the technology is up to par for you.
02:26It's really about maintaining the integrity of the sport or not getting fans upset?
02:32I think it's a bit of both.
02:34I mean, we're now in a position where we're able to capture in sub one second latency
02:4029 skeletal parts, body parts on the athletes, which is through no wearables, purely through
02:48optical tracking, through having cameras in the stadium.
02:51So that technology has come on a lot.
02:53And we now have 400 people globally in our product development teams who are building
02:58out computer vision, AI and machine learning technology in order to get there.
03:02So the technology is coming quickly.
03:04But obviously, the sport has to be ready for the application of that technology.
03:10We started working with FIFA about eight years ago or so, where we introduced, it was
03:17actually in 2018 World Cup, where we introduced VAR with FIFA.
03:23And that was effectively looking to make the process of offsides clearer.
03:29But that was actually a 90 second latency.
03:32We then in the 22 World Cup introduced alongside them semi-automated offside, which was a circa
03:3930 second latency on the offside decisions.
03:44We are now working with them about introducing automated offside, which is on a one second delay.
03:48So effectively, you can see the increment over the last six to eight years where the speed of
03:54decision making has got quicker.
03:56The accuracy has got quicker and we've been able to automate a lot of that.
03:59And ultimately, I think that's the journey that a lot of the U.S.
04:03sports are now moving on, where they look to automate some of this.
04:06But as we said, you really do need to be sensitive to your phrase coming, to the integrity of the
04:12sport and make sure it matches the product on the field.