Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Toronto Maple Leafs and Raptors, launched an R&D program called SportsX with Amazon Web Services on Tuesday, which will focus largely on developing virtual-reality technology for the big business of sports entertainment. 

It’s an expansion of a pilot that started last March. Here’s what you need to know about MLSE’s VR plans: 

Headsets at practice: The pilot program produced two pieces of wearable tech. One lets players and coaches walk into the middle of a virtual game, and pause and rewind to analyze how players moved. The other displays real-time statistics about players during hockey games for audiences on a headset as well as on a tabletop display. 

These products are proof-of-concept and aren’t being used by players or fans yet, though the basketball headset is “very close,” said Christian Magsisi, vice-president of venue and digital technology at MLSE.

Magsisi said the new SportsX projects aren’t necessarily going to be only VR and AR. An example he gave was potentially reducing bias in scouting players. “It would be simple pattern recognition that we’d be able to do with machine learning,” he said. 

Skate to where the puck is going: The NHL now tracks players and the puck during games using tiny sensors, a system put into place in the 2021–22 season. That produces data like players’ locations, skating speed and shot speed, which the MLSE wants to process and display in real time, said Magsisi. 

“The platform provided by the NHL is fairly rudimentary, so this would be an order of magnitude better,” said Humza Teherany, MLSE’s chief technology and digital officer.

Teherany said the VR/AR technology could make watching sports at home feel more immersive, but the headsets are too big and not intuitive enough, which is why more R&D is needed. He would not specify how much the MLSE is investing in the program, but said they’re co-investing “people, time and dollars through our partnership” with AWS.

The big business of sports tech: MLSE’s unveiling comes a week after the NBA took an equity stake in StellarAlgo, a Calgary-based company that brings together commercial data to understand fans’ spending habits. It’s a multi-year deal that potentially gives StellarAlgo access to the league’s 30 franchises, helping to open the door to the global professional sports industry worth about US$200 billion.