NBA Summer League: Annual Innovation Lab Offers Glimpse Into Future of NBA Broadcasts, League Ops Microsoft Azure, Sony Hawk-Eye, COSM's C360, seven NBA Launchpad startups are key partners By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Friday, July 7, 2023 - 3:03 pm
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The NBA Summer League has long served as an unparalleled vehicle for experimentation, providing an opportunity for the NBA and its broadcast partners to test out the latest technologies that will drive the future of the broadcast and in-venue fan experience, basketball strategy and analytics, officiating and in-game operations, and more. This year's edition, which tips off today at the Thomas & Mack Center and Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas, will continue that tradition of innovation with a slew of technology demos and serve as a coming-out party of sorts for the seven startups participating in the NBA Launchpad emerging-technology initiative.
Summer League continues to be the best forum for this innovation lab because of the quantity of games that we have in one city, and the environment itself here in Las Vegas is just perfect for innovation, says Barney Carleton, director, broadcast operations and events, NBA. The relationships that we've cultivated with not only our broadcast partners but also the basketball-strategy and operations teams, as well as the individual teams and coaches, make this all possible.
Onsite in Vegas: Breeding Ground for Technological Innovation ESPN and NBA TV, who are broadcasting the Summer League games, have teamed up with the league at this year's Innovation Lab. The production compound features three trucks - NEP EN3 (A and B units) and NEP Supershooter32 - and seven trailers housing equipment, personnel, and vendors. ESPN reconfigured the compound this year to maximize shade, with Filmwerks providing power and HVAC.
Inside the NBA Summer League production compound in Vegas
The league is focusing on a handful of key pillars this year: enhancing referee communications, boosting virtual signage for national and international distribution, further leveraging the Microsoft Azure cloud platform on which the NBA App was built, testing out Sony's Hawk-Eye player- and ball-tracking data, and enhancing the viewing experience with next-gen cameras and microphones.
The overall level of effort that goes into covering all of these games at Summer League from both courts is just amazing, says Carleton. Along with all of our innovation efforts, our compound continues to grow every year. It's an unbelievable effort, and we're looking forward to continuing to grow it in the future.
All About the Cloud: NBA Taps Microsoft Azure for Live Production Since signing a deal with the NBA in 2020, Microsoft Azure has become a key partner and played an integral role in building the backend infrastructure for the NBA App unveiled last year. At Summer League, the two are working together on a wide spectrum of tests, including cloud live-production workflows.
The NBA's app launched last year was developed with cloud and AI partner Microsoft. (Image: NBA)
The NBA is looking to improve our flexibility and ability to scale as events that we are covering for the NBA app continue to pop up, says Carleton. The NBA and Microsoft are leveraging a lot of great vendors and partners to architect cloud-based workflows that will enable us to better spin up and down resources to create better content.
Last month, the NBA announced that premier pro-am basketball from various leagues - including Drew League, Miami Pro League, and AEBL - will stream globally on the NBA App and NBA.com. Currently, the league is deploying mobile units or other onsite production facilities for the bulk of these events. However, Carleton sees an opportunity for live cloud-based production workflows to streamline these operations in the future.
What we're looking to do is solve for scale, he explains. At the moment, the model for those pro-am leagues is to produce them onsite and then stream the games to the app in traditional fashion. We have an appliance that we are testing here that is on-ramping [camera/audio] feeds into the Microsoft Azure cloud, where the game would be produced. We see these as a potential solution for the abundance of content that we currently use significant resources to cover.
In recent years, the NBA App has become home to several alternative game presentations, including NBA HooperVision, NBABet Stream, NBA Strategy Stream, and Throw It Down With Bill Walton. Carleton sees the cloud-based live-production model as a valuable asset for these shows as well.
Alternative feeds definitely factor into our Microsoft Azure experimentation, he says. We're continuing to work with new [alternative presentation formats] and see what resonates with fans, and we've had a lot of success. Now we're looking to increase the technology tool set we have available for future opportunities.
Hawk-Eye Joins the Party: More Data for Broadcasters, Fans, Officials, Teams The NBA made waves in March in announcing a multi-year deal to deploy Sony's Hawk-Eye Innovations optical tracking. The technology will, for the first time, enable data to be captured in real time in three dimensions, including movement of each player and the ball, all at sub-second latency.
Cosm will deploy four C360 cameras for offline testing to prepare for the upcoming NBA season
This is the first year we're going to have tracking capability for every Summer League game at both venues, which is going to give us a lot more data and video to work with, says Tom Ryan, VP, basketball strategy and analytics, NBA. We're very excited to be doing a test with Hawk-Eye's smart replay system. We're going to have an onset replay center - which we typically don't
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NBA Summer League: Annual Innovation Lab Offers Glimpse Into Future of NBA Broadcasts, League Ops Microsoft Azure, Sony Hawk-Eye, COSM's C360, seven NBA Launchpad startups are key partners By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
