The Finnish ice hockey champion club Tappara and Wisehockey launched the world’s first Puck Biography, a keepsake and souvenir that brings a completely new digital dimension to an authentic hockey puck. The first Puck Biography exclusive smart pucks, used in Liiga championship games in the spring of 2022, were gifted to two Finnish public figures: journalist Arto Nyberg and chef Hans Välimäki. Puck Biography combines a physical game puck and its authentic statistics in a digital format, which allows fans to own a piece of the team’s history.
Every second of every game in the Finnish hockey league Liiga has been recorded digitally with the Wisehockey analytics platform for several seasons already. Now fans can own not just a used game puck but also a piece of the team’s story with it. The spring 2022 Liiga champion Tappara gifted the first Puck Biography smart pucks to chef Hans Välimäki and journalist and TV host Arto Nyberg, both renowned Finnish public figures, on Friday, October 7.
“Puck Biography” is a concept that combines an authentic game puck and the digital dimension in a totally unique way. This means not just having a smart puck that was used in a specific game to score a major goal. In addition, the owner of an exclusive puck gets access to all exciting details of the puck in use: who shot and scored goals with it, how long the puck was on the ice, and dozens of other game events. With the puck, you get a QR code you can scan to view the puck’s events and statistics.
The exceptional collectible arouses curiosity. The receivers of the first Puck Biography smart pucks, Nyberg and Välimäki, were excited about the new piece of team memorabilia.
”This is an outstanding innovation, and the story of a puck really stands out in a completely new way. It didn’t cross my mind how much information and story about a puck’s life circle you can have,” Nyberg said.
”It feels wonderful to now own a puck like this. It will arouse interest and discussion with everyone, and anyone can easily check the puck’s biography with their own phone. The puck will be showcased in my home,” Välimäki said.
Tappara that gifted the smart pucks recognized the great potential of real-time sports analytics and digitalization from the start. ”Tappara has been involved in the development of the real-time analytics platform from the beginning. Now for the first time there is a product where the physical and the digital meet. We can easily predict success for this product,” said Tappara’s Manager of Sales and Business Development Aki Hautamäki.
Tappara has already decided how to proceed with Puck Biography:
”Smart pucks with their puck-specific statistics will be available to buyers before the new year. This allows everyone to own a part of our team’s story or, for example, give a unique Christmas present to someone who already has got everything.”
Wisehockey enables unlimited digital services
Used in all Liiga games for the fourth league-wide season, the Wisehockey analytics platform collects accurate statistical data from every game. This means that the journey of each smart puck from the first face-off to the last pass or shot is also saved in the data cloud.
From this emerged the idea to provide fans and partners with a unique game keepsake that is not just a physical object but also a non-physical and fascinating puck biography of Wisehockey statistics. Before smart pucks, used game pucks were just memorabilia without actual knowledge of their interesting life cycles and exciting events.
”Wisehockey’s unique game modeling enables unlimited new digital service concepts. From the beginning, our focus has been on the fans and storytelling. Puck Biography is a great example of creating a new level to a traditional keepsake. In addition, the chip inside a smart puck makes it easy to verify a puck’s origin. Puck Biography can be offered to fans also in real time as a unique NFT,” says Wisehockey’s Head of Product Management Mika Hulkki.
Sports memorabilia has a long history worldwide. Fans have a deep emotional attachment to clubs and collectibles, and collector’s items related to sports sell at high prices. Thanks to the chip inside every Wisehockey puck, the owner can be certain that the puck is exactly what it is supposed to be.
Fascinating puck biography told with statistics
The Wisehockey smart pucks gifted to Nyberg and Välimäki have been used in the third game of Liiga finals and semifinals in the spring.
Game puck from the Tappara–KooKoo game on 14 April 2022
The top chef Hans Välimäki was gifted a Liiga semifinal puck that Petteri Puhakka of Tappara used to tie the score short-handed.
Game puck from the Tappara–TPS game on 25 April 2022
The journalist and TV host Arto Nyberg received the puck that Otto Leskinen used to score the winning goal 2–1 for Tappara during the finals.
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Wisehockey in short
The Wisehockey system is a fully automated real-time sports analytics platform that gathers game data using Quuppa’s advanced positioning technology, and automatically analyzes and presents the data to users in a visualized and easy-to-use format.
The Wisehockey analytics platform has years of experience in introducing the possibilities of real-time data to ice hockey. Smart puck data is widely used in gambling, TV, and media.
Wisesport is an official trademark of the company Wisehockey Ltd.
