A large screen as an entertainment instrument. 11th March 2014
"Super Touch" is at first sight a large HD monitor by Red Bee with attached software called "Piero" that Sky Italy reporters and commentators or "talents", just like Marchegiani and Costacurta (two former soccer players) and Andrea Zorzi (former volleyball player), intensively employ in various sports broadcasts.
In practice, the situation is more complex because this Super Touch becomes an indispensable adjunct in the management of many television programs as well as an analysis tool that is used to review the "whole" match, starting from the actions on the field.
This is the most technical and tactical use of this instrument, and allows to review the top actions of the matches, to stop them, and physically draw-on-screen actions, and stop the movements, create a circle on the attacker; it allows you to set conjectures and hypotheses of the actions, widening - for example - on one side and creating an arrow , maybe drawing actions and then stopping the image; then using it to indicate exactly what is happening in the field and commenting.
The system operates thanks to the information returned by a complex database that Sky gets drawn directly by an external company, OPTA (http://www.optasports.com/it).
A big engine behind
This database provides a number of useful data and statistics, before the game, which are inserted individually into the engine that runs this tactical display. The update includes weekly statistics, the number of times ball was in possession for the player, the occupied areas in the field by each player, the mileage covered by each player, how many times he has passed the ball to a team-mate, rather than to another.
In practice, it is a good deal of information that are usually only available to coaches in Serie A matches and that instead the home audience can grasp and see.
Federico Ferri and Alessandro Scipioni, are the two journalists who deal with Sky Sports HD Serie A and the coordination work of the "football product."
The use of such Super touch is exclusive for football where it allows to reconstruct the actions, but there are other versions that are used in golf and tennis, and also especially in the NBA.
Alessandro Scipioni points out: "With Piero and Opta we carried out directly the great job of developing and adapting it to try and model the software and the database according to our needs. In practice, the software is available to any broadcaster but customization is essential."
Opta is a company of international scouting that also takes advantage of the valuable contribution of many coaches and football clubs to develop services for the media and make an accurate diagnosis of the game and allows you to view all the data in real time on the screen.
The data base of the current game updates live and the system is developed by Sky in cooperation with Opta.
The screen, once opened, displays a soccer field, obviously green, but some darker areas outlined in red, those that are physically "trampled" by that player. So the viewer at home can feel immediately the behavior - from the point of view of every tactical player during the match, starting from where it was deployed in the field.
And, of course, everything can be repurposed for any player.
