Getting positional play data : It's, likely, in the crowd

Sports analysis is used to find deeper insights intounderstanding athlete performance and team strategy.One limitation to continuing progress in this area isacquiring data that represents player and puck (or ball)movement. In some sports, such as baseball and cricket,there are significant statistical events that are reasonablyeasy to record. Other sports, such as hockey and soccer,have few statistical events and might be better describedas flowing sports. It is much more difficult to acquire datain these flowing sports. One solution is to use trackingdevices, in the form of micro-chips embedded on players;however, there remain a number of challenges to usingthis embedded technology. For example, if a league doesnot impose the technology on all teams, why would anopposing team wear tracking devices that could potentiallyexpose their team’s behavior? Similarly, to developsystems for automated scouting at the farm, high-school,and youth level, the technology cost for mass adoption isprohibitive.