The championship series of the Finnish Premier League, Veikkausliiga, was played using a fully automated Wisesport football analytics platform. The scalable Wisesport system is known of thousands of games played in professional ice hockey leagues such as the KHL and the Finnish Hockey League. The real-time sports analytics platform enables completely new digital services via TV, mobile apps, and gambling.
Using the Wisesport football analytics platform, the Finnish Premier League (Veikkausliiga) became the first league in the world to use fully automated real-time football analytics in an entire championship series. Alongside sports clubs, different service provides can use data produced by the Wisesport platform both in arenas as well as at home.
The Wisesport platform allows offering real-time services around football matches. Similar features have already been introduced in professional ice hockey leagues that use the Wisehockey platform. The analytics system enables unique and appealing services and features via TV, mobile apps, and gambling. Real-time analytics are based on positioning technology and automated processing of coordinate data.
”Last year’s final Veikkausliiga game was already played with our smart football platform. Now we extended the platform into the entire championship series. This makes Veikkausliiga the world’s first football series to play all matches regularly with this kind of technology. All clubs in the championship series had access to visualized analytics and automated video clipping in real time,” says Miska Kuusisto, Head of Sales at Wisehockey Ltd.
”Our method of producing refined data from coordinate information in real time is unique. Currently even the biggest professional leagues cannot do the same. Even before, we have been able to do the same in ice hockey with Wisehockey, and the quick transition to football highlights the scalability of our analytics product. For providers of TV, gambling and arena services, our reliable real-time platform offers completely new ways to serve fans and reach a younger, digital-native audience, and this is only the beginning,” Kuusisto adds.
Fully automated analytics are easy to implement and use
In addition to unique analytics features, the Wisesport platform is easy to operate, which allows using analytics on a different scale from player development to professional games. Wisesport fully automates both analysis and daily routines. This means that no operating personnel are required at arena events. The platform requires no routine maintenance and zero upkeep measures between games or seasons.
”Starting from the installation process, we built the system robust and, most of all, free of maintenance. Installation takes two working days, and after that we do not need to visit the arena. Our first hockey arena has been working continuously for five years and it has hosted hundreds of games,” says Mika Hulkki, Head of Product Management at Wisehockey Ltd.
”For the positioning of players and the ball, we use Quuppa’s extremely light tags weighing six grams that do not require re-charging during a season. You can attach lightweight tags to gear such as jerseys. Nowadays, many professional teams use GPS positioning which requires wearing special vests because of the weight of the hardware. Those are quite impossible to insert into a ball, which makes the scope of analysis more narrow,” Hulkki adds.
The fully automated real-time Wisesport platform is a unique product even on the international level. The analytics platform, with a wide range of fan engagement services, is scalable for different-size organizations from individual clubs to full leagues, and it serves diverse users.
Earlier, the Football Association of Finland and Wisehockey Ltd agreed on a multi-year partnership, which concretizes in analytical collaboration and the Eerikkilä Training Center, the home of the Finnish national team. In Eerikkilä, young prospects play regularly using the Wisesport platform in training camps and international practice games. With the championship series of Veikkausliiga, smart football data has become part of Finnish professional-level football.
Highlights from championship series statistics
Here are some Top 5 statistics from the championship series, showing only some of the statistics available via the Wisesport platform.
The championship series of the Finnish Premier League culminated in the bronze game between the clubs FC Inter and SJK (2–5) and the finale between the clubs HJK and KuPS (1–1). The final battle resulted in HJK winning the championship with many successful matches behind.
For example, KuPS has performed especially well in pass statistics throughout matches. This is highlighted by their “forward pass distance” statistic.
Forward pass distance shows how far in total a player passed the ball in the offensive direction (the sum of all passes in this direction). KuPS has been dominating the stat, demonstrating effective pass game.
The top 5 players’ “average ball control speed” shows that HJK’s players move faster with the ball than others on average. While KuPS has been making short passes from the center field, HJK’s typical playing style consists of long passes and fast carries of the ball on the sides.
Ball control time shows how many minutes and seconds a player has controlled the ball altogether. A player may have taken control over the ball many times, but how long was he actually able to maintain the control? With less ball control time, a player may have actively passed the puck to teammates, or lost the ball easily to the opposing team.
Top 5 hardest shots, a classic! Time after time, viewers wonder who shot the hardest and how fast it was. It looks like not just one team dominates the shooting stats.
Wisehockey and Wisesport in short
The Wisesport 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.
More information:
Miska Kuusisto, Head of Sales, +358 50 480 3658, miska.kuusisto@wisehockey.com
Mika Hulkki, Head of Product Management, +358 50 086 6267, mika.hulkki@wisehockey.com
