Sony announces reconstruction of its sports business as it brings Beyond Sports into the fold
Beyond Sports uses Blockys to provide viewers with a new way to visualise live game play analysis
Sony Corporation has announced that it is reconstructing its sports business following the acquisition of Beyond Sports, a provider of analysis and visualisation positional player tracking data.
Beyond Sports was acquired by Sony on 28 October. It will now form part of Sony’s sports business alongside Hawk-Eye and Pulselive.
Beyond Sports positions itself as the gateway to live sports in the metaverse. The Beyond Sports team brings an additional layer of data expertise to the group, focused on human movement sciences plus modular and scalable applications. Its proprietary engine will accelerate collective efforts in making three dimensional visualisations and applications available to rights holders and fans.
The addition of Beyond Sports to the group is a key pillar in providing Sony’s clients with an end-to-end service in the sports data and tech space.
Hiroshi Kawano, corporate executive, executive vice president at Sony Corporation stated: “We are confident that the acquisition of Beyond Sports will further strengthen our sports business to realise new sports entertainment bridging live and virtual worlds. By maximising Beyond Sports’ technology and expertise, we aim to create new sports entertainment experiences that unlock the power and emotion of sports.”
Rufus Hack, CEO at Hawk-Eye and Pulselive, stated: “We are delighted to welcome Beyond Sports as we further strengthen Sony’s sports business. We feel that marrying the unique capabilities of Beyond Sports alongside the incredible businesses of Hawk-Eye and Pulselive will truly enhance our ambition to be a strategic partner to the world’s biggest sports leagues.
“Beyond Sports has an incredible reputation in the sports industry for delivering world class data and using that data to create new and immersive sports content experiences. We are excited to continue to build out the breadth and distinctiveness of our capabilities and feel the data tracking expertise of Hawk-Eye paired with the data visualisation expertise of Beyond Sport will be a winning combination for our clients.”
Sander Schouten, Beyond Sports’ CEO and co-founder, echoed Hack’s statement: “We couldn’t be happier to be joining Sony’s sports businesses. Hawk-Eye and Pulselive offer an incredible suite of products and services to their clients globally, across different sports and end user touch points, and we’re excited to add ourselves to these conversations.
“Our vision at Beyond Sports has always been to challenge the status quo when it comes to sports data, data visualisation and sports content consumption, and we will keep on doing so for the benefit of everyone involved. We believe that we can accelerate that process alongside the existing businesses, to fully utilise the combined potential and cater to the needs of the new generation of sports fans.”
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Beyond Sports technology is being used by some of the biggest names in the sports industry. It has powered the successful and Sports Emmy-winning NFL Wildcard game in 2021 as well as the popular NHL Stanley Cup Blocky livestreams.