Today former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed and explained the LA Clippers Court Vision Augmented Reality.  Courtvision allows the viewer to see estimated probabilities, predict player moves, change cameras, add computer generated highlights, overlay play by play audio and explain plays all in real time as the game is being played.

If you want more detail on how Second Spectrum applies machine learning to create context (difficulty, probabilities, …) in live sports, watch this 9 minute video:

If you want a little more detail on the company that made this software, Second Spectrum, watch this 90 second promotional video from May of 2016:

MACHINE TRANSCRIPTION:

This is Bloomberg Technology I’m Emily Chang in San Francisco. Steve Ballmer is notorious for his enthusiastic speeches as the former CEO of Microsoft. Now he is bringing his passion for tech to the basketball court as the owner of the L.A. Clippers bomber is unveiling Clippers corporate vision and augmented reality platform that puts fans in charge of their viewing experience.

Court vision developed alongside video tech company Second Spectrum uses a mix of machine learning AI and augmented reality to let viewers to misplay predict player moves and estimate probabilities. Fans can toggle between coach player and mascot modes for different diagrams and camera angles. I sat down with Ballmer to discuss. Take a listen.

No you’re super pumped about this. You’re you’re you’re pitching this as a revolutionary way to watch Clippers games and that this puts the viewing experience in the hands of the viewer. How does it work?

Well what we’ve done essentially with our partners at second spectrum a very cool technology club here in L.A. is applied artificial intelligence to watch study the game and then draw in real time automatically what’s going on.

So if you want to watch as a player would watch and see the probability that your teammates will be successful for a shot. If you want to see real time diagramming of plays we provide you that if you want various camera angles you can get at that if you if you want live common commentating you can computer generated highlights that are available in near real time. The ability right from within either the website or within the applications to tweet things out.

We provide all of that that’s in beta. The thing that is broadly available today which is very exciting for people here in the Los Angeles market is a set of augmented streams that do much of the things that I talked about which are available now on the Fox Sports App and people can watch the game that way tonight.

Well I think we’re really trying to do is take the fans first the fans who are already excited about the game and give them a way to get into the game even deeper you know in every business. I think one of the first things you have to do is feed your feed your enthusiasts and particularly since NBA fans tend to skew younger. We think we’ll see great uptake by today’s fanbase. We also are building out interesting things to draw in people who know less about the game and because this is essentially software service will continue to feed new new products new ideas into this thing with great regularity.

So given that you are collecting all of this additional data is there something that can also help the team win games.

Yeah this is actually built off a set of technology that came out first in an analytics product. There are six cameras in the ceiling of every NBA arena. The software that we’re talking about starts by looking at the floor seeing every player knowing where the ball is moving the speed. And then there’s a layer of so-called machine learning software that can tell you exactly that was this kind of pick and roll it success rate likelihood to lead to a shot made shot is X it’s being defended in this way all of the core technology then feeds a set of tools that the teams do use to improve the way they game plan product. Eagle the Clippers were one of the first users of that product.

Again from from this company second spectrum here in L.A. where the tech goes from here for example how can legalized sports betting be integrated into that platform.

Well we have a platform in which you can show additional data real time in the game and in which you can interact.

I think that makes it a great platform in which to support legalized sports betting sports gaming and when that comes on board you may want to see fantasy points you may want to see probabilities of certain things happening. There’s a lot of things that might be legalized on which people can gamble.

We can show those to you live on the screen and with interactivity. There’s a possibility for online gaming partners to work with us augment the experience in that way.

Note that this segment was taken from THIS Bloomberg.com story.



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