The English Football Championship will abandon the controversial VAR Offside system in favor of a dozen iPhones in the new season.
The new video assistant referee system, codenamed «Dragon», was developed by Genius Sports and its subsidiary Second Spectrum, known for its video tracking collaboration with the NBA. The system will be based on dozens of iPhone 14s that will capture high-frame rate video from different angles, and special machine intelligence software will analyze it.
- In 1883, the offside rule was introduced in football, which seems to have only increased the number of controversial moments during a match. Sometimes, even with a dozen cameras, it is difficult to know whether a player was offside, so more advanced systems began to be involved in refereeing — the first, semi-automatic ones were launched at the 2022 FIFA World Cup and Euro 2024. They used up to 15 cameras and a sensor inside the ball to track several dozen points on each player’s body, but they failed to capture the moments perfectly
According to Genius, their the new system «Dragon» will initially use at least 28 iPhone 14 cameras and newer at every Premier League stadium, potentially will be able to constantly track 7000 to 10,000 points on the players’ bodies.
The smartphones will be placed in individual waterproof cases with fans connected to a power source. The team has developed mounts that can hold up to four iPhones together.
Most videos broadcast today are shot at 50 or 60 frames per second — Dragon instead can shoot up to 200 frames per second. Initially, the system will take pictures at a slower speed, but later it will automaticallydetects important events that occur in seconds and temporarily increases the frame rate on certain cameras
Source: Wired
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