Premiere in Liga Portugal: SELECT Receives FIFA QUALITY PRO LABEL for Ball With Integrated KINEXON Sensor
The “Brillant Super iBall” (intelligent ball) from SELECT received the “FIFA Quality Pro” certification. The ball will make its debut in the playoff series of the first Portuguese Football League — Liga Portugal Bwin — and generate live data for the live broadcast on TV.
From training facilities of tech-savvy clubs to official match use: The “Brillant Super iBall” (intelligent ball) from SELECT has received the “FIFA Quality Pro” certification. So far, the technology has mainly been used in the training of data-driven Bundesliga clubs. The ball will make its debut in the playoff series of the first Portuguese Football League — Liga Portugal Bwin. The generated live data will be shared publicly within the live broadcast.
Portuguese professional football clubs participating in the relegation matches this season (end of May 2022) will be the first to play with official match balls from SELECT that have a KINEXON tracking sensor inside. Using radio technology, the sensor transmits its position and movement data around 50 times per second. In real-time, data on shot speed, passing accuracy, flight height, pass and shot lengths, passing paths and much more can be recorded and analyzed with centimeter precision. For use in an official league match, balls require the “FIFA Quality Pro” certification. SELECT has now received this certification for its tracking-capable model called “Brillant Super iBall”.
Portuguese Relegation Playoffs Will Be First Live Showcase
The ball will be used for the first time in the two relegation playoff matches between the 16th placed team of the first league and the 3rd placed team of the second league at the end of May. Mentioned statistics such as shot speed etc. will be displayed to fans in the live TV broadcast.
Insights on the Complete Game Action Available Live for the First Time
“We are proud that SELECT uses KINEXON best-in-class technology as partner in this project”, says Maximilian Schmidt, Global Sports Lead at KINEXON.
“The ball is the most important protagonist on the pitch. The ‘FIFA Quality Pro’ certification allows leagues to capture the entire match action seamlessly – and everything in real-time. Whether for clubs, leagues, sponsors or fans — this enables us to provide a wide range of stakeholders with valuable insights into the sport of football.”
SELECT is looking forward to clubs and fans discovering the new possibilities the SELECT iBall brings. CEO at SELECT Sport, Peter Knap, says:
“At SELECT Sport we are happy to announce that our new SELECT iBall, which we created together with KINEXON, is ready to be played with in the top leagues. We are looking forward to seeing the ball in action in the playoffs of the Portuguese football league, and for clubs, trainers, and fans to realize the new possibilities the SELECT iBall offers. This new football with a built-in tracking sensor, will improve the football experience, for both clubs and fans.”
Technology Already Proven in Top-Level Sport for Years
A total of five years of development work has gone into the Brillant Super iBall. SELECT and KINEXON have evolved and tested hundreds of prototypes for this. The first test took place in 2018 in the German Bundesliga.
Today, both companies can guarantee that the 14-gram light ball sensor works reliably even in demanding conditions and does not affect the flight and rotation behavior of the ball. Professional football players feel no difference to the conventional ball.
To record every ball movement in three dimensions, a network is installed around the match field. This captures the raw data in real time via ultra-wideband radio technology and uses triangulation and time-of-flight measurement to determine the position data. A processor then litigates this data, also live, into more than 50 statistics into the KINEXON software.
“The Final Piece of the Puzzle in Generating Sports-Specific Live Insights.”
Players are already being tracked using KINEXON’s real-time radio sensor-based technology for years. In the world’s most prestigious sports leagues, such as the German and U.S. professional leagues in football, basketball, handball and ice hockey, athletes wear KINEXON sensors under their jerseys to give coaches live insights into performance and load.“The ball adds the final piece of the puzzle in generating sports-specific live insights,” explains Maximilian Schmidt.
“After all, only those who analyze player behavior and performance in context to the position and movement of the ball can draw valid conclusions. This applies to both fitness and tactics. Complex, manual video analysis can be speed up or simplified many times over with the help of ball tracking.”
For this reason, innovative clubs such as Bayer 04 Leverkusen, VfL Wolfsburg or RB Leipzig already rely on live tracking of players and balls with KINEXON during training. Marcel Daum, Assistant Coach Analysis at Bayer 04 Leverkusen:
„Having the opportunity to get reliable live ball data during a match boosts our analysis options. Since the introduction of replaying scenes down at the bench, we can focus a lot more on our playing principles and see directly what’s happening. By having live ball data, we focus a lot more on specific scenes.”
SELECT Brillant Super iBall Is Ready for the Top Leagues
The SELECT Brillant Super iBall empowered by KINEXON is FIFA Quality Pro approved, which is the highest ranking for a football in the FIFA system. Only footballs that carry the FIFA Quality Pro label can be used in international matches organized by FIFA or the confederations. The new SELECT iBall has passed all the tests and is ready to be played with in professional leagues and cups around the world.
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