NBA switches to Hawk-Eye: 3D data on how players move

The deal was announced on 9 March 2023 in Atlanta. The multi-year partnership between the NBA and Hawk-Eye Innovations, part of the Sony group, began with the 2023/24 season. It gave the league something earlier systems could not deliver: real-time tracking of play in three dimensions, covering every player and the ball, with a delay of under a second.

The main product is pose data, a capture of how each player is positioned. The NBA said it would sharpen officiating by raising the accuracy of decisions and speeding up play. In later seasons, the league said, it would allow automatic calls on situations such as the ball going out of bounds or goaltending.

We treat it as a real privilege that we can work with the NBA, said Rufus Hack, chief executive of Sony's sports businesses.

Evan Wasch, the league's executive vice president of basketball strategy and analytics, also spoke about the partnership. He pointed to three effects: better officiating, insights for clubs and a dynamic data set for fans.

Ten years of preparation

Hawk-Eye did not walk in off the street. The company had worked with the league since 2019 in a proof of concept. It tested the system at the NBA Summer League and in six arenas, and showed the setup met the accuracy and latency requirements needed to track the ball and poses at league level.

There is one more link in the data chain. Sportradar, the league's exclusive data provider, generates accurate, low-latency tracking data. It also creates events, metrics and advanced statistics automatically.

For a fan the change stays invisible until a new graphic appears on screen. For clubs it is a change of category. Data on how a player's body is positioned at the moment of a shot or a pass opens a different field of analysis than the records of play outcomes used until now. The league also spoke openly about a third use: virtual reconstructions of games and new content formats.

What body position gives you

The difference from older systems is technical, but it has practical consequences. Earlier setups could show where a player and the ball were on the floor. Pose data describes the position of the whole body: arms, legs and torso. It makes it possible to settle whether a hand actually touched the ball and whether a foot crossed the line before a shot was taken. These are exactly the situations in which a referee at the monitor had to reconstruct the sequence of events from an imprecise recording.

The league said the next step would be automating some calls. Not all officiating, but specific, measurable cases: the ball going out of bounds and goaltending. The analogy with football is clear: first the system advises, a human confirms.

A third effect concerns content. Data on body position allows three-dimensional reconstructions of plays and new forms of graphics for broadcasters. It also gives clubs material that cannot be read from a statistical record. A player stops being a point on a diagram and becomes a solid body in motion. That changes not only officiating but also the way a game is sold.