SBJ Power Up: Go inside the NHL’s tech-powered Situation Room

The SBA: Tech nomination window closes at 11:59 p.m. EST tonight. Get those final submissions in here. I hope to see you at the ceremony in May.

And welcome to an absolutely massive week for SBJ, featuring four events across four days in New York City. Join us for as many as you’d like! Happy Monday. — Ethan Joyce

In today’s edition of Power Up:

• Live from Toronto: Inside the NHL’s high-tech Situation Room
• IBM using AI to unlock additional stats for UFC broadcasters during fights
• Evolv Q3 revenue up 57%, expects to turn cash-flow positive in Q4

“Goal, Anaheim.”

“Goal, Boston.”

These pronouncements from video technicians were, for a time, the only interruptions piercing the quiet murmur of the NHL’s Situation Room, the league’s high-tech Toronto facility where every replay challenge is reviewed and ruled on.

Most goals are straightforward, but every one is reviewed by a hockey operations executive to ensure its legality. So long as the puck wasn’t kicked or high-sticked into the net, the game continues. But the technicians, each assigned a single game, watch several angles of each goal to prepare for a possible coach’s challenge — such as whether the offensive team was offside.

“Goal, Pittsburgh. This one’s on us.”

Suddenly, the room stirs to life. The Penguins appeared to net a game-winning goal against the Flyers in overtime, and the Situation Room initiates all challenges in the final minute of regulation or in OT. As the braintrust began reviewing the play — several hockey operations executives and a retired referee — word arrived that the on-ice refs whistled an infraction that nullified the goal.

A few minutes later, the Flyers scored their own apparent game winner, but very quickly, a potentially incriminating view of their entrance into the zone appeared on the screen.

“We’re going to challenge this. Let’s get the linesmen on.”

Word is communicated to the on-ice officials, one of whom informs the crowd that “the previous play is under review by the league to see if the play was offsides prior to the goal” as boos cascade down from Flyers fans.

Situation Room staff pored over several angles, most notably a Sony 4K camera installed right on the blue line for exactly this use. And the final verdict, made by the Situation Room, was close, but clear: Offside. No goal. About 80 seconds after the review began, the ref shared the news in Philadelphia. Even more boos followed.

“We are the keepers of the game,” said Kris King, NHL executive vice president of hockey operations, the department’s No. 2-ranking official under Colin Campbell.

This is the second year of an upgraded, high-tech Situation Room. There are 16 LED flat screens adorning the front wall, a desk in the middle of the room for executives and roughly a dozen workspaces around the perimeter, where technicians monitor every game. SBJ was one of two news outlets granted behind-the-scenes access on the first night the 10th-floor space was open to media.

“Our job doesn’t really change a lot, but the equipment that we use, and the knowledge that we gain from using better equipment, just gives us a little bit of an upper edge to get to the right answer quicker,” King added.

The NHL was the first professional sports league to centralize its reviews back in 1991, and it has worked with Sony-owned Hawk-Eye’s Synchronized Multi-Angle Replay Technology (SMART) as its video replay provider since 2015.

Separately, the league named Sony a global technology partner earlier this year, and Hawk-Eye’s tracking cameras were installed in every NHL arena prior to last season. That system offers potentially richer data: Whereas NHL Edge, which is powered by SMT sensors on the players and in the puck, tracks a single, center-of-mass location for each player, Hawk-Eye collects data from 29 points on each skater and six points from the hockey stick.

In time, that optical data from Hawk-Eye should inform a richer future of hockey analytics, more immersive fan engagement and, perhaps, data-driven support for officials.

“The NHL are very much innovators in the space — they want to innovate with us to create the future of technology in sport — but I love the fact that it is coupled with patience,” said Dan Cash, Sony Hawk-Eye’s managing director for North America. “They know that this is going to be powerful for their game, but they aren’t trying to sprint to the finish line here, which I think with technology can be sometimes a mistake.”

‘A real-time league’

When King joined the league office in the early 2000s, the process was dramatically different. When a discipline issue arose, King would need to ferry a VHS tape to Campbell, who lived in Tillsonburg, a two-hour drive from the NHL office in Toronto.

They’d each get in their cars and drive halfway, inevitably connecting at a Tim Horton’s, the most Canadian of meeting points. Campbell would then drive home, review the tape and make a ruling about a possible suspension or fine. Nowadays, that video is transmitted in about 125 milliseconds from arenas to the Situation Room and about as rapidly to Campbell’s house, saving immense time and gas, at only the cost of a fresh coffee.

“How we transport video is the secret sauce, so to speak,” Cash said. “It’s not easy to transport video as quick as we do over a wide area network.”

“We are the keepers of the game.”

—  Kris King, NHL executive vice president of hockey operations

It’s even less for the league’s next-door neighbors. The goal horn from next-door Scotiabank Arena blared concurrently with a Maple Leafs goal scored on the Situation Room monitor. (The horn also later sounded for a Blue Jays home run; the World Series, featuring the local team, was discreetly on a few Situation Room screens.) That immediacy lets the Situation Room prepare video clips and look at questionable calls before even hearing from the on-site staff.

“It definitely is a real-time league now,” said Rod Pasma, NHL group vice president of hockey operations. “A lot of times we’ll know exactly what’s going on before [the coaches] even call the officials over to challenge a play.”

On that night, the Situation Room scoured replays to prepare a ruling that never materialized, with the on-site coach opting against the review process. “That’s a good non-challenge,” King said, noting the likelihood the call wouldn’t have been reversed.

The NHL continues to add cameras: There are three in each goal, one above, four on the blue lines and an elevated 4K lens to provide the All-12 viewpoint of every skater. Some arenas now have Cosm C360 cameras. The league will soon begin testing an 8K version of the All-12 at the Prudential Center — where the NHL and Verizon also are creating an innovation lab to test new tech, scheduled for full operation early in the new year.

On this particular night in the Toronto Situation Room, as part of ESPN’s Frozen Frenzy, all 32 teams were playing, many of the start times staggered by 15-minute intervals to make the action nonstop. One workstation was solely dedicated to pressing go on a digital dasherboards celebration for Alex Ovechkin’s 900th goal. The NHL didn’t want to chance it flashing live on-air, only for the goal to be overturned on review.

“The technology’s gotten to a point where the only thing we can’t do right now is literally hit the horn in the building,” Pasma said.

Bird’s-eye view

High in the rafters above Scotiabank Arena, looking down on the Maple Leafs’ 1960s Stanley Cup banners, are six black, rectangular cameras affixed to the catwalk and helping power the Hawk-Eye tracking system. From up here in the rafters, the ice seems impossibly low, but the 4K, 60-frames-per-second cameras capture granular movement data via images streamed directly to the cloud — Hawk-Eye’s first leaguewide deal to be cloud-native. Another six cameras are placed on lower levels of the arena to avoid obstruction from the center-hung video board.

Those dozen video inputs are triangulated and processed to determine the precise location of every skater and his stick. Hawk-Eye has provided MLB with bat tracking data for a couple seasons, but that’s only one bat in a known location every time — far different than 12 sticks across a 200-foot-by-85-foot ice rink.

For now, the AI models interpreting this data are still going through iterations to reach the confidence threshold for accuracy needed for wider distribution. The NHL has never had stick data, and Hawk-Eye and the league are in the “true development phase in refining the technology,” said Sean Williams, NHL vice president, innovation and technology partnerships. Williams added that it could soon be used to enhance the existing Edge tracking that teams can access through the data feed.

When Hawk-Eye data does become a part of the NHL Edge repository, it will not only further enrich the data-driven storytelling for fans via broadcast and digital media and help clubs more intricately analyze the sport, it also could provide other inputs for referees, linesmen and Situation Room executives.

“Not currently, but that’s definitely where we’re going,” said Sean Ellis, NHL vice president of hockey operations, of using tracking data for officiating. “We’re not going to roll it out until we’re 100% confident and comfortable that the data that we’re getting is accurate.”

Even then, the potential is more to inform than automate. “We are genuinely looking at all options,” Williams said, “but our fundamental strategy is to keep the call on the ice made by humans.”

IBM is introducing a new AI-powered tool that will be made available to UFC broadcasters and instantly reveal advanced researched stats that can be used on air during fights. The tool is being called “In-Fight Insights” and it’s the first in-fight integration stemming from the collaboration from IBM and UFC after the technology company sponsored the fighting property last fall. IBM is paying UFC low eight figures over four years to be the official partner in the categories of global AI, official technology and Enterprise AI, SBJ previously reported.

The new “In-Fight Insights” tool will debut with this weekend’s UFC 322 headlined by Jack Della Maddalena versus Islam Makhachev at Madison Square Garden and involves IBM’s Watsonx AI platform. The capability will feed announcers like blow-by-blow man Jon Anik key information that often was only used before or after fights, the sides say. That includes breaking records, setting streaks or reaching other important milestones.

Companies are keen to show that the money they are investing in AI is paying off, and IBM SVP/Marketing & Communications Jonathan Adashek in a prepared statement said that this new development with UFC “is the latest example of how AI is really changing the game for the live sports viewing experience for fans around the world.” UFC and IBM had already created what they call the UFC Insights Engine that used data for fan experienced-related purposes. TKO EVP/Innovation Alon Cohen wrote in his prepared remarks that “anyone who uses AI tools knows they are normally able to go deep or fast, but not both.” He said this accomplishes both and called it a “true game-changer.”

Evolv’s $42.9M third quarter revenue represented a 57% year-over-year increase. The company said in its latest SEC filing on Thursday that it expects to be cash-flow positive in the next quarter.

The frictionless security screening tech provider’s Q3 operating expenses were down 14% year-over-year, led by a 22% slash to sales and marketing spending. The company still booked a net loss of $1.8M during the quarter, but it was a significant improvement over a year ago when the company lost $30.4M during the period.

Evolv’s Q3 annual recurring revenue was $117.2M, a 25% jump from the same period last year ($93.7M). Subscription revenue was $22.7M, up from $17.9M the same time last year.

Evolv ended the quarter with $56.2M in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. It has drawn down $30M of its $75M credit agreement with MidCap in July.

Evolv adjusted its FY25 full-year outlook with projected revenue between $142M and $145M, up from $132M.

The SEC’s investigation into aspects of Evolv’s marketing practices — commenced in Feb. 2024 — remains active. In Nov. 2024, Evolv received a voluntary request for documents from the DOJ relating to the same issue, but the company was informed Aug. 7 of this year that it was no longer under any DOJ investigation.

• NBA animated alt-cast ‘Dunk the Halls’ to return on Christmas Day
• Sources: FIFA signs DoorDash to sponsorship agreement for 2026 World Cup
• NFLPA chief spokeswoman Liz Allen leaving role
• StubHub’s first financial report shows steep price of going public
• Apple boosts sports lineup in Apple TV offering with MLS switch
• Talent pool: Latest agency signings

• The Wall Street Journal: AI Is Making Big Tech Weaker
• Axios: AI’s next act - World models that move beyond language
• The New York Times: Jeff Bezos Creates A.I. Start-Up Where He Will Be Co-Chief Executive