Happy Wednesday! Let’s dive straight into Orreco’s new contract with Sportradar to boost workload management through NBA tracking data. My colleague Joe Lemire has more below. — Ethan Joyce
In today’s edition of Power Up:
- Orreco becomes first to add Sportradar’s NBA data for real-time performance
- Audience Analysis: Prime Video draws its best ‘TNF’ with Cowboys-Lions
- NLL adds replay tech with the start of 2025-26 season
Orreco becomes first to add Sportradar NBA data for real-time performance
Orreco is the first athlete performance analytics firm to contract with Sportradar for the use of real-time NBA tracking data to help teams optimize player workloads, maximize availability and sustain peak performance.
Founded as a tool to guide recovery using blood-borne biomarkers, Orreco has expanded its expertise in recent years to utilize AI and computer vision to track player movement and identify injury risks. Its Motion Signal product debuted in soccer three years ago with strong efficacy in identifying movement patterns that preceded hamstring and other soft-tissue injuries.
Orreco co-founder & CEO Brian Moore said that work has only matured and expanded to other sports, including basketball, where “we have already found interesting patterns that we are sharing with our clients in the league to support their decision making and help them win.”
Orreco has 20 PhD sport scientists on staff and works with teams in the NBA, NHL, NFL, MLS, WNBA, F1 and Premier League, as well as individual athletes on the PGA Tour. SBJ Tech honored Orreco with Best in Athlete Performance Technology at the 2023 Sports Business Awards: Tech.
Audience Analysis: Prime Video draws its best ‘TNF’ with Cowboys-Lions; NBA Cup has top group play stage yet
Prime Video shattered its “Thursday Night Football” viewership record with 19.4 million viewers for Cowboys-Lions on “Thursday Night Football,” passing the prior record of 17.8 million set during Week 2 this season with Commanders-Packers. Its best sports audience of any kind remains 22.1 million for last season’s NFL Wild Card game (Steelers-Ravens). Prime Video also drew 16.3 million for Bears-Eagles in the Black Friday game after Thanksgiving, up 21% from 2024 and its best figure on the holiday yet.
The Emirates NBA Cup had its best group play audience, averaging 1.5 million viewers for games across, ESPN, NBC, Peacock and Prime Video. Thanksgiving week was a boon for all partners. NBC on Nov. 25 drew 2.7 million for regional coverage (Magic-76ers and Clippers-Lakers), marking the best group play audience yet. On Thanksgiving Eve, ESPN averaged 2.1 million for an NBA Cup tripleheader, which was its best night for the in-season tourney. Prime Video had two Black Friday NBA Cup games, averaging 2.1 million as well.
This past week, NBC averaged 3.2 million viewers for regionalized NBA action featuring Knicks-Celtics and Thunder-Warriors. That’s the NBA’s best pre-Christmas Tuesday audience since 1996.
ESPN had its best college volleyball season on record, fueled by a record number of matches on ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 (33). The 44 matches across ABC/ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU averaged 190,000 viewers, which is 36% better than last season. Helping fuel the gain was the Nebraska-Kentucky match on Labor Day weekend, which got a rare broadcast TV window and delivered 1.2 million viewers.
ESPN also drew its best regular-season wrestling audience ever recently, as the Iowa State-Iowa dual drew 350,000 viewers. That’s 44% better than the previous best for a Cy-Hawk dual.
NLL adds replay tech with the start of 2025-26 season
When the National Lacrosse League opened its season last weekend, it did so with a new support for officials to make review decisions more quickly and confidently.
Two years of work with cloud production firm BitFire has produced a replay system for refs, adding to a growing trend of sports throughout the world that are using technology for line monitoring or official decisions (if you haven’t, take a moment to read about all things automated officiating from my colleague Joe Lemire here).
BitFire has worked with the NLL since 2021 for broadcast transmission, but a couple of years ago, the league’s SVP/Technology and Broadcast Operations Ed Derse approached the company to tackle an enhanced replay system. At the time, reviews required officials to go to a monitor and put on a headset to communicate with the game presentation for views and second looks.
Now, through any internet-connected device, referees can scroll through all the different camera views in venues and find the best angles on their own. Players and coaches on each bench also get the tech, enabling them to better recognize opportunities for challenges.
The NLL did a test run during May’s championship game in Buffalo. “As officials become comfortable with this system and operate it, I think one, it will help them reach their decision more quickly,” Derse said. “And I think with a bit more confidence, because there’s certain things you’re going to be able to see side-by-side rather than [saying] ‘show me this now. Show me that.’ Then it eliminates the communications issues.”
Derse shared that the league produced some training materials for the system, but any user with experience in today’s streaming world can acclimate quickly. He added that around the title game test run, the NLL also brought an official along to check out the system for the first time with no prior training. It took him no more than 20 minutes to acclimate. The ease-of-use validation added another layer of confidence in the system that debuted during NLL Faceoff Weekend.
“We’re trying to eliminate the same pain points that many of the other leagues experience with replay review,” Derse said. “What makes it different for us is that we’re leveraging cloud-native systems, that to some extent, stuff that we’re already using as part of our broadcast ecosystem.”
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