The rise of smart sports

Smart solutions let Penske Entertainment and INDYCAR deliver digital innovations

To bring their fans – at the venue and around the world – as close to the action as possible, we worked together to take the data generated during the INDYCAR race and deliver it to the fans.

‘In an Indianapolis 500-mile race with 33 cars going 200 laps, we take something like 8-million data records through telemetry off the cars. Fans are very much on their A-game; they want more data, they want to know what’s going on. It’s not just watching cars go around the track; it’s how come this happened or why is this happening, what’s going on with this driver or that driver,’ says Roger Penske, Chairman, Penske Corporation.

Working together has allowed Penske Entertainment and NTT to drive innovation in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES©. With the strong technological foundation underpinning motor racing, INDYCAR provides the perfect environment to explore the limits of what technology can deliver.

The spirit of co-innovation between NTT and Penske Entertainment means that we’re continuously looking for ways to innovate. Be it improving their operational efficiency or finding new ways to bring the fans closer to the racing, the close cooperation between the two organizations means that they’re always looking to push the boundaries of what’s possible. 

11 stadiums, 11 networks – Zero downtime at UEFA Euro 2020

The UEFA European Championship is one of the world’s largest sporting events. Since UEFA Euro 2020™ marked the first time that the tournament has been staged across the continent, ensuring that each stadium stayed connected was critical to the success of the tournament. A critical part of that connectivity was ensuring internet access for broadcasters, journalists and VIPs remained stable and efficient. Similarly, UEFA’s operations officials required reliable connectivity to ensure access to internal operations applications and tools at the edge.

We completed a high-level design of the network, which focused on standardizing as many elements of the network as possible. This was essential to ensure that the support team was able to rapidly resolve any issues flagged at the edge.

Connecting these locations to the rest of the world, as well as UEFA to their own infrastructure, was of critical importance to UEFA. Each location was connected back to the International Broadcast Center near Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands by a redundant pair of 100Gbps network links. 

Digital race operations and connected fans through innovative transformation

Starting in 2015 with live tracking of riders and providing real-time data for broadcasters, Amaury Sport Organisation (A.S.O.) has worked to push the boundaries of what’s possible in sports. Highlights include enhanced data analytics, a full Race Center website, the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide greater insight into the race, the use of augmented reality, and the creation of fantasy leagues linked to the race. In addition, we enabled the creation of data-driven storytelling, providing rich insights on social media and broadcasts; continually evolving this capability with improved visualizations and new stories for fans each year.

Building on their foundation of previous innovations, in 2020, A.S.O. saw growth across multiple areas:

• 33 million people accessed Race Center
• @letourdata saw 9 million impressions over the three weeks of the tour
• almost 200,000 people played the official Tour de France fantasy game

Alongside fan-focused innovations for 2021, we’ve created a digital twin of the Tour de France to enable A.S.O. to digitally transform race operations. Leveraging a digital fabric of sensors, edge computing devices, networking technologies, and applications, the digital twin is an accurate model of the entire 3,400km of the race route as well as all other areas associated with the race. This allows the race organizers to plan their operations on an accurate model, mapping specific areas and key locations. On race day they can track the race and all race vehicles in real-time. This enables them to direct race operations with access to real-time data, providing them with full visibility of the entire race.