UFL Kickoff 2025: Sophomore Season Will Add Player POV Cameras, Ball-Tracking Technology Spring football league's new technology-centric division focuses on innovation By Mark J Burns, SVG Contributor
Friday, March 28, 2025 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The launch of the UFL's second season this weekend will mark the debut of player-worn body cameras and chipped smart balls as the spring-football enterprise keeps its foot on the pedal of innovation.
We see our league as an opportunity to be a proving ground for technology, says Scott Harniman, SVP, technology, UFL.
Ahead of the 2025 season, the UFL announced FAST, a new technology-centric division geared toward innovation. The league was methodical and thoughtful with the companies it elevated into the FAST program, Harniman says, all with this unified goal across every work stream in the UFL to improve the game of football.
The UFL, ESPN and FOX Sports, and Mindfly are working toward deploying up to four body cameras in player-worn vests each week. (Photos: UFL)
In 2025, the UFL - now co-owned by RedBird Capital Partners, actor Dwayne The Rock Johnson, and investor/businesswoman Dany Garcia - will debut a player-worn body camera via a partnership with Tel Aviv-based Mindfly.
Having tested the technology during the later stages of the 2024 season, the UFL will put the body-armor vests on up to four players each week this season. Both FOX Sports and ESPN, the league's media partners, will have a weekly Mindfly game, Harniman said (there are no plans to place the Mindfly cameras on referees in 2025).
I feel like it almost creates that VR-type experience just watching it through this lens, says Harniman.
The UFL's Football Operations Group, led by Pro Bowler and former FOX NFL analyst Daryl Johnston, played an instrumental role in helping Mindfly create a physical product tailored for the league's players, Harniman notes.
TArlington Renegades safety Joe Powell wears the Mindfly body-armor vest. The camera in it will capture not only the player's point-of-view on the field but audio as well.
Mindfly's engineering and designer teams added multiple straps under the shoulder pads to make the vest tighter and also ensured that the crown on the front of the jerseys was screwed on as tight as possible. In a key tinkering session with Mindfly personnel, he recalls, the UFL's team equipment managers and league staff got us to the best product.
I think this will be the most impactful thing that we introduce from a FAST standpoint in the 2025 season, he adds, noting that the feedback from players - who are literally forgetting that they're wearing the technology - has been very positive.
The UFL is also partnering with SkillCorner to provide player-tracking data through computer-vision technology for all games in 2025. During the postgame, the all-22 camera feed will be delivered to the SkillCorner team, whose computer vision will analyze that data and subsequently provide the UFL with comprehensive player-tracking data and contextual data feeds.
We want to be able to showcase that our athletes are doing the same things that you see on Saturday and Sunday when we're not playing: running 21 miles an hour or the longest plays of 70 yards, Harniman says. Those things happen in our league. Our players are unbelievable athletes. We want to showcase them.
This specific initiative didn't require a significant financial investment in either sensor-based technology or infrastructure that needed to be installed at the league's stadiums, he adds. He and the league office envision the presenting the data digitally at first, whether through statistics on the league's website, push notifications via the UFL app, or in graphics on social media. he says internal discussions about how to present the data to fans are ongoing.
In addition, the UFL is collaborating with Sportable on integrating its sensor-based technology into smart footballs. Although the London-based sports-technology company also offers player-tracking capabilities, in the 2025 season, the league office is focused specifically on starting with the chipped balls. According to Harniman, players won't be wearing sensors in-game. A subset of game balls will have chips.
Through the ball-tracking technology, the UFL will gather data on distance traveled, acceleration, and the physical location of the ball. Sportable will be part of the UFL's offseason showcases, which will allow the company to put sensors on quarterbacks and gather granular data about how they're throwing the ball, including velocity, spin rate, and accuracy.
We think there's a high ceiling with what Sportable is able to do, Harniman says. We wanted to do it in bite-size chunks and make sure we're being purposeful with the data that we pull. We know that quarterback is a very important position in any league but especially in our league, so it made sense to start with the quarterback data and be able to compare some of these athletes and quarterbacks that may show up in our showcases versus our actual athletes that played in our UFL season in 2025. That's the goal.
Brad Cheney, VP, field ops/engineering, FOX Sports, hopes the ball-tracking data will be ready to present during live broadcasts by the midpoint of the season. We're very excited about being able to have the full real-time data set.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
UFL Kickoff 2025: Sophomore Season Will Add Player POV Cameras, Ball-Tracking Technology Spring football league's new technology-centric division focuses on innovation By Mark J Burns, SVG Contributor 
