Going to the arena has long been the only way to watch a kids’ hockey game, but new technology is taking them to computer screens and mobile phones.Getty Images
Instant replays on scoreboards and post-game highlight reels. Bench-side iPads. Real-time player analysis and tracking. All are common in the professional ranks, but now they’re coming to minor leagues near you.
As new technologies pop up at local arenas, courts and fields, players in youth, junior and amateur sports now have access to more data, analysis, replays and other tech tools than professionals of a generation ago.
“The amount of data we can capture and will be able to capture in the coming years is kind of remarkable,” says Ray Giroux, a former NHL defenceman and COO of Canadian sports technology provider LiveBarn. “When you see what’s happening at the NHL level, five years later that same type of data, the same type of iPad on the bench technology and behind-the-net cams, all these things are going to be available to the youth and amateur players.”
Giroux, who made his way into the tech industry a year after retiring as a professional hockey player in 2014, says LiveBarn has installed high-tech cameras at 4,500 sports venues across Canada, the United States and Sweden, including about 2,500 hockey rinks.
“When we launched our product, the goal was to have automated cameras that had algorithms that automatically follow the flow of the play, mimicking a cameraman,” he says, adding that the initial intention was to make it possible for family members to watch youth and amateur games without attending in person. “Now we offer parents and coaches the ability to order a game that’ll be completely condensed and essentially follow their player around the ice.”
As the technology progresses, Giroux says the company will soon be able to offer automated highlight reels, player metrics and feedback, using the hardware it has already installed at local arenas across the country.
His company isn’t the only game in town.
“In the next two months, we’re going to be launching integration with Apple Watch, and a player is going to be able to log in and be like, ‘how many shifts did I have? What was my average speed? Who’s the fastest guy in our league?’” says Ron Moravek, co-founder of SportNinja, a Vancouver-based provider of amateur and youth sports league software. “We have a prototype for an LCD scoreboard, so when someone scores a goal, it can immediately put up your stats, the speed you were skating at, and show the highlight, all in real time, and all automated.”
Moravek adds that the company – which he co-founded in 2017, after being “blown away by the amount of paper being used” in his sons’ youth leagues – offers stats, schedules, rankings, player registration, insurance-waiver tracking and other administrative tools for leagues and players.
SportNinja also integrates with video technology providers such as LiveBarn to attach game footage to teams and highlights to player profiles. The company boasts 170,000 unique player profiles in its database, ranging from youth hockey to pickleball-playing retirees.
“When you’re using our platform and you’re scoring on a mobile device, if I go ‘goal by number 34′ it’s actually going to ping the video database, back up 20 seconds, and upload that snippet of video right to the player’s profile and right to the game highlight, all in real time,” Moravek says. “And because we’re collecting all the stats, we have all this information, we’re eventually going to use AI … to write articles.”
Leagues that sign up for SportNinja on a recurring subscription model also get access to its league-management software, which includes schedule building, fees and registration tracking. Leagues can also pick and choose which features are offered to which leagues and players, allowing them to adjust their offering to ensure it remains age and skill level appropriate.
“When you set up the competition at the organization level, you can basically set, ‘I just want basic stats,’ and then it doesn’t track the goal scorers and that type of thing, and we have a lot of house leagues that don’t want to track that,” Moravek explains. “We’ve actually had more and more organizations for the younger ones saying that they don’t want team chat available for the younger teams, because who knows what they’re sharing?”
LiveBarn is available to players, families and coaches for a monthly fee. Giroux says league organizers and venue operators have full control over the cameras, allowing them to limit the technology’s use among certain age groups.
“Technology in youth sports at too early an age or pushed too much by a parent or a coach can take the fun out of a game, so striking that balance is a challenge, and I think it’s a serious responsibility. Sports are going to be far more important as technology continues to evolve and being good stewards at the youth level – making sure it’s used in the right way – is also going to be important.”