Amazon Web Services Inc. unveiled its latest marquee customer today: sports analytics provider Second Spectrum Inc., which has selected AWS as its preferred cloud, machine learning and artificial intelligence technology provider.

Second Spectrum should be a familiar name for sports fans because it’s the official Optical Tracking and Analytics provider for the National Basketball Association, as well as the English Premier League.

The company uses a range of AWS services to deliver its stats and insights to fans via analytics, visualizations and searchable video clips during games. For example, it uses several AWS media services to power Clippers CourtVision, which is an augmented reality-based livestreaming product that displays player tracking information, real-time stats and explanatory animations on mobile devices for the Los Angeles Clippers during games.

The company’s content generation services run entirely on AWS’ infrastructure platform. Second Spectrum relies on AWS’ machine learning and computer vision technologies to collect 3D spatial data from cameras during live matches.

The video is then indexed in real-time with metadata such as the identity and location of players, and the type of play in progress. That information is indexed against existing historical data on players to generate new insights such as its Quantified Shot Quality, which measures expected effective field goal percentages, and Quantified Shooter Impact, which measures the impact of a player on a game versus the league average.

Second Spectrum also uses AWS Elemental Live to encode live video and compress it so it can be streamed to mobile devices. And the AWS Elemental MediaStore service is used to enable television producers to easily access key moments from previous event coverage.

Second Spectrum said that in the future it’s planning to use the AWS SageMaker service to fine-tune its machine learning models on years of video data to generate even more predictive statistics during games. It will also use AWS Outposts, which extends AWS infrastructure to third-party data centers and colocation spaces, to reduce latency in machine learning inference, graphics processing and live broadcast delivery.

“Using AWS’ breadth and depth of services, Second Spectrum will elevate its analytics and video processing capabilities to provide deeper insights into on-field and on-court action,” said Second Spectrum Chief Executive Officer Rajiv Maheswaran.

Image: Second Spectrum