2024’s trends, benefits, and use cases
The competition in the world of sports is immense. Best-in-class training equipment, innovative rehabilitation exercises, sports psychology — these methods have become the norm and don’t guarantee success any more. In a bid for prestigious titles and fame, individual athletes and teams should look for new ways of optimizing their tactics and bolstering performance. And technology is stepping in to help them achieve new heights.
Smart shoes and insoles for speed measuring and posture correction, smartwatches and intelligent sensors for activity and health monitoring — the beauty of IoT solutions lies in data collection and analytics that allows all stakeholders to be on the same visual page. However, if you want to take sports intelligence up a notch, combine sensors with a trailblazing video analysis. We’re sure this success formula will help you boost your winning chances.
What is sports video analysis?
In today’s era, where AI solutions are widely adopted, it may seem redundant to discuss the basics. However, delving into the best practices of video analysis in sports can unveil numerous scenarios that can greatly benefit coaches.
To begin with, video analysis can be conducted in real-time or after-match modes. This allows coaches and analysts to make immediate adjustments during a game or thoroughly analyze the footage afterwards.
Moreover, the collection of quantitative statistics from video analysis can provide valuable insights into the quality of the game strategy, the performance of individual talents, and the overall atmosphere during the match.
Video analysis in sports encompasses three main types: tactical analysis, behavioral analysis, and individual analysis.
- Tactical analysis focuses on understanding the effectiveness of the game strategy in real-time or for future games. Coaches can monitor players’ positioning during the game and breaks, allowing them to provide valuable recommendations for improved performance.
- Behavioral analysis seeks to capture players’ emotions and conditions during pivotal moments such as falls, goals, or receiving penalties. Analyzing these emotional and physical aspects can provide valuable insights into players’ reactions and help identify areas for improvement.
- Individual analysis can be conducted on a single player or groups of players to evaluate their effectiveness and contribution to the team. Analyzing these aspects can assist coaches in determining the best starting line-up and optimizing team performance.
To enhance the depth of player performance analysis, it is essential to leverage a wide range of video materials. This includes footage from matches, warm-ups, and training sessions. By utilizing such footage, coaches and analysts can gain a comprehensive understanding of player performance and make informed decisions.
When it comes to implementing video analysis in sports, it is not just about the software. The use of hardware, such as stadium cameras or drones, can greatly enhance the analysis process. Aerial perspectives captured by drones can provide new angles and enable thorough analysis of player activities.
Footage capture from aerial perspectives
Benefits of video analysis in sports
So, why do coaches make use of video analysis in sports? Such CV-based tools offer a range of benefits that greatly contribute to the success of teams and individual players, including:
- Ensuring effective communication between coaches and teams. By providing visual examples of errors made during games, coaches can clearly illustrate areas for improvement, ensuring that players understand and learn from their mistakes.
- Making real-time decisions for game improvement. By utilizing video analysis tools to watch live-stream matches, coaches quickly identify weaknesses and make strategic adjustments on the spot.
- Enhancing individual player performance. By comparing weak and strong points through video analysis, coaches can identify areas for improvement and tailor training programs accordingly.
- Gaining insight into the game strategy of opponents. By studying video footage of previous games and analyzing opponents’ tactics, teams can better understand the strategies employed by their rivals.
Leverage our proven computer vision skills
Get into the ins and outs of your team’s performance with CV-driven video analysis. We build trailblazing CV-powered systems that enable fast and accurate analysis of players, actions, and environments to put coaches and sports managers ahead of the game.
3 Use cases of sports video analysis
#1 Video analytics as an ace card in upgrading player skills
Sometimes a particular shot or a slight difference in the player’s physical condition can totally change the match outcome, and understanding what that game breaker was will put you ahead of the pack.
Build advanced video analysis software that will help you reveal what exactly was happening after a particular change in an athlete’s physical condition, for example, when the heart rate spiked, body temperature elevated, or blood pressure dropped. Underpinned by the results of a deep footage analysis, you’ll also be able to understand the impact of certain shots, passes, as well as angle or speed changes and find the ways of improving athlete performance.
Athlete performance analysis
Besides assessing the nature of turning moments, video analysis in sports is ready to unfold its wings in identifying player habits and effectively correcting those that hamper success. For example, it might turn out that in 90% of cases when your tennis player serves flat to the second half on breakpoints, they lose the game. Or, when nervous, your goalkeeper always safeguards the right part of the net during a penalty and in most cases misses a goal.
Case in point: live basketball stats solution
Sports video analytics can be leveraged in a more advanced way by allowing colleagues who distribute live matches to engage fans in real-time. This can be done by showcasing their favorite player’s performance directly on their mobile devices, providing an immersive and interactive experience for fans.
You can also build trust in a video analysis app to identify any performance gaps and start developing the skills that are key to clinching more victories in the sports you’re in, whether it’s tennis, golf, or soccer. Among those skills are reverse forehands, backspin shots, dribblings, topspin volleys, wrist shots, birdies, takeoffs, acceleration, and more.
#2 Speaking the language of video to enhance game tactics
Building effective game strategies for a particular match has never been a walk in the park for coaches. And sometimes IoT data featuring key performance metrics is not enough. Fortunately, sophisticated video analytics swoops in with the promise to relieve the strain.
Examine footage by footage to spot the situations that occur frequently in the course of the game and accurately assess their efficiency. This way, you will not only understand the nature of ineffective performance patterns and apply the relevant corrective actions, but also boost those tactics that contribute to small and big wins.
Of course, it’s key to focus on the capabilities of your own athletes when developing tactical moves. However, don’t underestimate the power of rival analytics. As you can’t equip your opponents with sensors and smartwatches to track their performance in real time, an extensive video analysis can become your silver bullet.
Sports intelligence reporting
Scrutinize rival tactics that led to considerable advantage in a particular match, check what was made in response to your new strategy, and analyze rivals’ emotions and their impact on the game. All this valuable information will help you accordingly tweak your tactics, giving you a leg up as the game unfolds.
#3 Improving player health with video data collection at hand
A healthy player is half the battle, but making sure your team is in perfect physical conditions is not as easy as it seems. Of course, video analytics is not a magic wand, but it can empower you to explore the problem with proper lenses.
Dive deep into video footage to understand how your athletes feel during matches, warm-ups, and training sessions. As one wrong step might lead to a serious lesion, pay attention to the way they do a particular exercise or train some difficult shots. Human vision is limited, so a machine-based post-processing is a must in revealing all possible inconsistencies. As of sprinters, it can be mistakes in femur split angles, stride length and frequency, knee lift, or heel drop. And tennis players might easily get injured due to the wrong serve angle or too long gliding on the court surface.
Athlete health analytics
Video analytics will also help you prevent poor athlete performance by detecting any deviations from their normal training. A player unconsciously changes some routine exercises or increases the intensity of the workout at the wrong time — an AI-powered coach assistant won’t let you miss a thing.
But if it turns out that one of your players got injured, a comprehensive video analysis will not only help you find the exact reason for that, but will also be instrumental in gauging the accuracy of doing all recovery exercises — for accelerated rehabilitation.
Where do we go from there?
To secure more victories, you should be in the loop about the most effective coaching methods and tools. Experts in online video and business intelligence, we’re here to help you with that. Leverage our competence to build an innovative video analytics system and use it to revamp your team’s performance. With valuable data in place, you’ll be able to thoroughly analyze player skills, efforts, and health as well as assess the capabilities of your rivals.
Going extra mile with CV in Sports: Reusing the footage for engaging fans
Do you know that sports video analysis is not just about improving the team’s or player’s performance? Sports streaming producers and distributors can also learn some practices for themselves.
Recapping frequently asked questions
What’s sports video analysis?
Sports video analysis is a necessary tool for coaches aiming to optimize the team and individual performance. It goes beyond being a trend, becoming an integral part of the coaching process to streamline strategies and enhance player development.
Why should I apply video analysis in sports?
You should apply video analysis in sports as a coach to ensure effective communication with the team players, make real-time decisions for game improvement, enhance individual player performance, and gain insight into opponents’ game strategy.
What are the examples of sports video analysis?
Some use cases of sports video analysis include upgrading player skills with video analytics, enhancing game tactics by analyzing video, and improving player health through accessing video data.
