As the world is moving toward a technology-driven future, we see many industries and sectors utilizing technology to perform better, solve complex problems, and simplify their tasks. We are in the age where we can’t imagine our lives without technology. Now, with Artificial Intelligence(AI) booming all around, things have just moved to another level.
Sports are a great means of entertainment and we see that the world of sports is also evolving rapidly. AI in sports has brought a great impact on the world of sports. Artificial Intelligence is transforming every major industry, including sports.
AI has the ability to crunch massive amounts of data and then make recommendations. It can take historic data and then derive valuable information from it.
AI in Sports
Players Health Analyses
AI can play a vital role in monitoring players’ health. Players’ physical and mental fitness is of utmost importance in any kind of sports.
AI-powered wearable technology such as smart watches and tracking devices enables us to track various parameters about players. AI wearables can assist fitness with their routine training activities. These AI wearables are a little different from conventional wearables, the conventional wearables just track the user’s activities and these don’t use or analyze the data collected, whereas AI wearables come with the power of analyzing the data collected and then making recommendations.
AI wearables can monitor player’s heart rate, breathing rate, and other biometrics to track their health and wellness. During training, AI can also help know how tired the player is, so the player can take some rest to prevent any injury. This information can help the team management understand and get better insights into the player’s fitness.
Sports tech startups such as Softeq have been providing such solutions.
Help Coaches
If you have followed any sports for a long time, you might have noticed how the coaches or team management have been making use of technology to do their job better.
Let’s take the example of cricket, in the last few years you might have noticed the amount of stats that are shown during the cricket match, the level of analyses, and the depth of analyses just blow away the mind.
Just to give an insight, we get to see the stats to a level that the exact strengths and weaknesses of a player can easily be figured out. For e.g, if a batsman scores above 60 runs then the winning percentage of the team is 70%. This helps coaches and team management to take proper decisions.
Another example is – National Football League (NFL) has been using AI in sports to analyze and improve the players’ performance.
FI race sport is also using AI. F1 cars are equipped with more than 200 sensors. AI algorithm is used to analyze the data from the sensors and allows coaches and drivers to figure out better racing techniques.
The benefits of using AI in sports are significant and it brings lots of insight, which in turn helps the team and individual players as well.
Player Performance
Moneyball, a movie based on the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, written by Michael Lewis. In the movie, Billy Beane used statistics like stolen bases and batting averages to build a winning combination for the baseball team.
Sports analytics is playing a crucial role in determining players’ performance these days. Let’s take the example of baseball and try to understand how stats combined with AI help in determining players’ performance.
Baseball analytics involves using raw stats such as stolen bases, runs batted in, and batting averages to construct more details models to evaluate a player’s performance.
“The math works,” Beane says.
“Over the course of a season, there’s some predictability to baseball. When you play 162 games, you eliminate a lot of random outcomes. There’s so much data that you can predict individual players’ performances and also the odds that certain strategies will pay off.”
Data-driven approach is used in many sports including basketball, golf, cricket, football, etc, to get insights into players’ performance.
A company called Second Spectrum has created software that uses AI to analyze basketball players’ performance in real-time and also helps to develop new game strategies.
AI in Sports to prevent Injuries
One might wonder if technology can really help prevent injuries, is it really possible?, and the answer is Yes.
Data scientists have developed machine learning algorithms to compute the probability of an athlete getting injured by measuring their overall workload. Data scientists were able to determine that professional football players experienced injuries per 1000 hours. They studied the players’ training patterns how often and how intensely an athlete trains in a given week.
Liverpool Football Club in the U.K. says it reduced the number of injuries to its players by a third after adopting AI-based data analytics from the company Zone7.
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Conclusion
AI is rapidly transforming the world of sports, one would have never thought that we could use AI in sports. AI has changed the world of sports. AI has given fans and coaches tools that can be used to do a lot of analytics and get better insights. Data-driven analytics in sports has taken sports to a different level.
The limitation that we humans have is, though we have huge data, historic data, we can’t process all of it on our own and derive results, this is where Artificial Intelligence cleverly solves this problem, it can not only process massive data but cleverly transform that data in valuable reports, analytics, and predictions.
The World of Sports has started adopting AI, today AI in sports is widely used in football, cricket, basketball, baseball, tennis, F1 race, and golf, and it’s likely to be integrated into many other sports.
The way the game strategies were planned has also changed completely over the last decade, with AI game strategies are being formulated in new ways. So, buckle up and get ready for an exciting ride as AI continues to revolutionize the world of sports!