Premier League to Begin Football Refereeing with iPhones

Have you ever been watching your favourite sports team on TV when, all the sudden, you are on your feet yelling at the referee? The UK’s Premier League intends to solve this very problem in relation to offside calls, through a system powered completely by iPhones.

The system, created by Genius Sports and known as “Dragon”, is comprised of roughly 28 smartphones with built-in cameras positioned throughout the arena at different angles. The iPhones simultaneously capture video throughout the entire game and can pick up between 7,000­­ – 10,000 data points on each player. This means that – coupled with the system’s 200 frames-per-second capture rate – Dragon can detect the “correct call” more quickly and accurately, which comes in handy in football’s complicated offside scenarios.

This is a welcome change for some fans, who have dealt with notoriously unpredictable video-assisted referee (VAR) systems for years. It is no wonder why these systems have not been accurate: FIFA’s machine-learning software could only pick up 29 data points on players compared to Dragon’s thousands.

However, we will have to wait until the Premier League rolls out the system to see if they can walk (or kick) the talk; the League says it plans to implement Dragon by the end of this calendar year and maintain it through the rest of the season. Regardless of its initial effectiveness, it is a promising development for the sports industry and motion-capture AI and could develop refereeing to the point that you could remain safely on your couch for an entire sports game.