AISpotter – Re-energising Inline Hockey
We are happy to share how AISpotter is supporting British Inline Skater Hockey Association on their way towards the European Championships in November this year.
Inline Hockey History
British Inline Skater Hockey was born on the streets of the inner cities in the UK and in the 1980’s was formerly known as ‘Street Hockey’. Many car parks and recreational areas would be filled with hockey players on skates who recreated their own NHL matches.
The sport swiftly evolved, leagues were formed from teams off the streets and the Street Hockey National Championships was soon featured on a weekly tv show, this was back when the UK only had 5 tv channels, so the sport drew quite an audience! As inline skates grew in popularity to the expense of the quad skate then so did the sport of Street Hockey and it become known as Inline Skater Hockey.
The British Inline Skater Hockey Association (BISHA) has been in existence for over 4 decades and recently the appetite for the sport has unfortunately dipped. A new leadership of BISHA formed last year is exploring new methods to re-energise the membership and attract new people to the sport – this is no different to the change the sport embraced in the 90’s to convert from quads to inline skates to retain members. Some may say the change in the sport is too late, but the outlook of the new leadership is that action is being taken 2 years before the sport collapses!
Supported by technology services
Technology in sport is one of the areas BISHA are promoting and for the last two years BISHA Team GB have adopted two tools to support their coaches, these are AISpotter & Hockey Coach Vision. The British Coaches have loaded match video content to AISpotter and tagged a variety of plays: Break Outs, Face Off Routines, Offensive/Defensive Plays etc.
Once tagged the passages of play are quickly identifiable and packaged into a presentation, which is then played back at our Team GB Camps where classroom sessions are then held to share insights. Such insights are then valuable for team motivation, injury prevention, improved performance and above all a competitive advantage. We then use the Hockey Coaching Vision tool to design drills and plays to tackle the insights surfaced.
Currently Sports Technology in Britain has some critics largely due to the management and pace of adoption of VAR in football – although it is the hybrid of human and machine causing the issues. As the technology advances and the machine learns then we will soon be in a position where we have instant and accurate decisions in football and people will have more faith.
AISpotter is no different and is in a similar transition period, nevertheless it is about adoption and using the tool where it can add value in is current format and then partnering and growing your sport at the same rate as the technology. Certainly BISHA Team GB and the use of AISpotter does not guarantee instant success, but we are now certainly more informed and we are gaining those extra percentages out of our performance as we head into the European Championships in November 2021.
About AISpotter
AISpotter enables professionals to turn massive amounts of recorded and streamed video into usable and shareable information that helps them make better decisions, delight fans, and even predict the future.
The technology pinpoints the most important parts of any recorded and even multiple simultaneous live-streamed videos, from any camera, with any setup, and makes production-ready highlights available instantly.
AISpotter was founded in 2018 when a university vision AI project was first used to help sports teams quickly get the best information from game videos. Now the company helps production people, 24/7 live streams, coaches, and even security firms across Europe to process video into usable knowledge and insights.
Contact me for further information: Anri Kivimäki
As a player and a marketer, it's extremely refreshing to see a product such as yours entering our sport at a very exciting time for us. I have no doubt that the support from AISpotter will really help solidify the foundations of our growth strategies, not only on the rink, but to also help grow the sport as a whole.