Tag: Toronto Raptors

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MLSE partners with AWS to enhance Toronto sports fan experience

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is partnering up with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) to bring fans of the Toronto Maple Leaf, Toronto Raptors, Toronto Football Club and Toronto Argonauts extraordinary sports moment and an enhanced fan engagement experience.

According to Amazon’s news release about the partnership, MLSE will use AWS’s “comprehensive portfolio of cloud capabilities, including ML, advanced analytics, compute, database, and storage services to support their teams and lines of business.” By innovating together, MLSE aims to build solutions that will support how teams play on the ice, court, pitch, or field, how players stay healthy on and off season, how fans connect with each other and experience games, and how sports franchises operate internally.

Amazon is deploying its ‘Amazon Rekognition‘ and ‘Amazon Kinesis‘ tools, the former of which is used for automated image and video analysis and the latter for collecting, processing and analyzing video and data streams in real time. The tools would be used to process and analyze video footage from cameras installed at team training facilities and game venues in real time to better prepare for crucial decisions during games. “For example, the critical game data stored and analyzed on AWS can be viewed by coaches on the bench to help them strategize their next play,” wrote Amazon

Additionally, MLSE will develop new technology for sports fans using AWS’s broad portfolio of cloud services to create extended and unrivaled experiences for its teams’ supporters in the arena, and at home. Using AR and VR applications, MLSE plans to power its “Game within the Game” digital experience that would allow fans to track their favourite players, access enhanced game insights in real time, take part in free-to-play gaming, and participate in on-demand sports betting.

Humza Teherany, chief technology & digital officer at MLSE, stated that the partnership with AWS will “help transform Toronto’s sports and entertainment industry” and enhance how the organization engages with fans by giving them exciting, personalized experiences in and out of the venues.

In the future, MLSE and AWS will build an “at-home and in-stadium” mixed-reality experience by combining visual data from cameras around the arena with sensors in players’ jerseys and the puck or ball, depending on the sport, which would build on ‘Digital Arena,’ MLSE’s existing teams’ mobile apps.

Learn more about the partnership here.

Image credit: Amazon Web Services

Source: Amazon Web Services

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Mobile Syrup

Raptors’ Scottie Barnes tours Toronto with a Pixel 7 in new Google ad

Google Canada dropped an ad for the Pixel 7 featuring Toronto Raptors forward (and NBA Rookie of the Year) Scottie Barnes touring Toronto and showing off the company’s new smartphone.

Unsurprisingly, the Pixel 7’s camera chops are on full display as Barnes pauses to snap pictures throughout Toronto. The ad flips back and forth between showing Barnes’ perspective walking through the city and raising the phone to snap pictures, then cycling through those pictures.

There’s also a nod to Google’s Messages app around 12 seconds in, possibly a dig at Apple as Google continues its shame campaign over the iPhone maker’s refusal to add RCS support (one of the major complaints is that the lack of RCS causes images sent between Android and iOS devices to look significantly worse).

The ad shows recognizable aspects of Toronto, like the city’s red and white street cars, grungy subway, someone dressed for Caribana, the CN Tower and tons of Raptors fans.

Keen-eyed viewers might also notice the various placements for Bell throughout the ad, including a digitally altered Bell signal in the Pixel 7’s status bar (which happens to be on the wrong side of the phone) and a white car with lines sporting Bell’s signature blue. There’s even what appears to be an edited bus stop advertisement in the background of one of the photos (it could be real, but I’ve never seen a bus stop ad that clean in my life).

You can check out the ad on YouTube. Or, if you’re curious to learn more about Google’s new smartphones, check out our Pixel 7 review here, and Pixel 7 Pro review here. Alternatively, you can read the Pixel Watch review here.

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Mobile Syrup

Toronto Raptors launch first-of-its-kind high-tech analytics board

The Toronto Raptors are stepping up their game.

The basketball team has just launched a brand-new, high-tech analytics board to provide players with all sorts of in-depth data on their performance.

At 36.7 metres (120 feet wide), the display takes up an entire wall at the OVO Athletic Centre, the team’s practice facility. The Raptors say this significant size, consisting of 448 individual boards and some 14 million pixels, makes the board the first of its kind in the league.

Using Amazon Web Services and a series of cameras placed above each rim, the board will display a slew of metrics related to each shot, including ball rotation, depth, trajectory and the height of the player’s jump.

The cameras are even capable of facial recognition and motion capture to identify and record data for each player. The team can then freely study all of this data and tweak their shots as necessary.

Toronto Raptors OVO Athletic Centre net with cameras

Cameras have been placed above each net to provide in-depth data on each shot.

These metrics will be captured on two screens on either end of the display, courtesy of Noah Analytics, but the board has other use cases. During a media demo event attended by MobileSyrup, the board also featured replays of a recent match with Chicago, as well as a breakdown of each player’s rebounds and deflections during said match.

The middle screen, which showed the Raptors logo, could also be used for special messaging like “Win.” That said, it’s still early days for the board, and a Raptors representative said the team is looking to discover even more applications down the line.

Toronto Raptors OVO Athletic Centre board metrics

Screens on either side of the board provide specific data on each shot.

For now, though, the team is already getting good mileage out of the board.

“There were certain things we were starting to emphasize this year,” said Nick Nurse, Raptors head coach, during a conversation with media. “For example, let’s say we were trying to emphasize that the first player across the floor does what we call ‘run to the rim.’ So we pulled out all the clips from last year where that happened, and a guy got a layup or a dunk, and we just let it roll. Then we started doing all the drill work, emphasizing that as it was rolling. And we did that for about three or four days before practice started, so that was probably the best example of doing stuff on the floor that was being shown on top.”

Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse

Nick Nurse, head coach of the Toronto Raptors, introduces the board to media.

So far, the team seems to be responding well to it. According to Nurse, Raptors point guard Fred VanVleet said the board is “the best thing they’ve done,” while power forward Thaddeus Young — who’s already invested in tech-powered shot training through Shoot 360 — told us “I like the fact that everything’s amplified” on the big screen. Fellow power forward Pascal Siakam offered similar praise last week.

The Raptors will open the 2022-23 NBA season at home against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday, October 19th.