AWS and Bundesliga Debut Two New Match Facts Giving Fans Insight into Germany’s Top Football Players and Teams
Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), and the Bundesliga, Germany’s top national football league, today announced two new Bundesliga Match Facts powered by AWS to give fans deeper insights into action on the pitch. The new Match Facts, “Set Piece Threat” and “Skill,” will debut on March 4, 2022, during Matchday 25 featuring Arminia Bielefeld versus FC Augsburg. “Set Piece Threat” delivers new perspective on a team’s scoring ability from plays such as free kicks and corner kicks, while “Skill” compares Bundesliga players to visualize the skills they bring to their teams and positions. Fans can learn more about how AWS is transforming the football industry with the Bundesliga on the AWS Bundesliga site.
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Screenshot of the new “Set Piece Threat” Match Fact (Photo: Business Wire)
With these two additions, there is now a portfolio of 10 Bundesliga Match Facts powered by AWS. Bundesliga Match Facts enhance game engagement by helping audiences better understand goal probability and the strategy involved in decision-making on the pitch. The league generates the Match Facts by gathering and analyzing data from live game camera feeds as they’re streamed into AWS. From there, Bundesliga uses AWS capabilities in analytics, machine learning, compute, storage, database, serverless, and media services to glean insights and generate predictions. Bundesliga then uses AWS capabilities to train, deploy, and scale the machine learning models used to generate them and deliver them as on-screen graphics during broadcasts and in the official Bundesliga app. Fans, coaches, players, and commentators can use the Match Facts as visual support for analyzing a team’s decision making.
Understanding the new Bundesliga Match Facts powered by AWS
Set Piece Threat: In modern football, teams score more than a quarter of all goals from set pieces like free kicks and corner kicks. Until now, fans had no reliable way of assessing the threat a team poses from different types of set pieces. “Set Piece Threat” quantifies a team’s threat by comparing the team to the league average to show how much of a threat a team is with their set pieces. During live broadcast games, video editors can use “Set Piece Threat” ahead of free kicks and corners to show how much more danger exists in the current matchup compared to the league average or whenever match commentators want to talk about set pieces and the related strength of a team.
Skill: In addition to their fundamental talent, every player in the Bundesliga brings some specialized skills to the game that complement those of their fellow players and make their team stronger. The new “Skill” Match Fact combines and compares the cumulative stats of every Bundesliga player to assess their skills across different categories. The stat features four player profiles: a “Finisher” who excels at scoring goals—in terms of number and efficiency; a “Sprinter” who generates high maximum speed on regular players and does that more often than other players; an “Initiator” who accumulates, assists, and second assists, consisting of a high number of difficult passes that lead to assists; and a “Ball Winner” who is able to create a lot of turnovers from the opposing team by winning the ball in an aerial or ground duel or intercepting an opponent’s pass. Bundesliga ranks each skill by combining several metrics into one score. If a player ranks in the league-wide Top 10 for a given skill, Bundesliga will highlight this player in the live broadcast or in the Bundesliga app when substitutions are shown.
“The pace of the players, the action on the pitch—Fußball is nonstop action. Brilliant plays can happen in a blink of an eye. We created the Bundesliga Match Facts powered by AWS to enrich the match experience for millions of fans worldwide, with real-time insights that deepen the viewer’s knowledge and appreciation of the sport and player actions,” said Andreas Heyden, Executive Vice President of Digital Innovations for DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga. “Together with AWS, we’re adding a whole new dimension to the sport, with innovative in-game perspectives that give context on game strategy to help redefine how the world watches football.”
“Bundesliga fans love their teams and immerse themselves in every detail of the play on the field. That’s why AWS and Bundesliga are always collaborating on new ways to deliver meaningful insights to fans and teams worldwide to create unique viewing experiences and provide clubs with essential player and team data that can help them improve performance,” said Klaus Buerg, General Manager for AWS Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL. “We’re proud to help Bundesliga differentiate itself among football leagues through advanced analytics, and we look forward to continuously improving the way fans experience sporting events.”
These two new Match Facts join Most Pressed Player, Attacking Zones, Average Positions – Trends, Shot Efficiency, Passing Profile, Speed Alert, Average Positions, and xGoals to bring the total number of insights available for Bundesliga fans to 10. Information on all of these statistics can be found on aws.amazon.com/sports/bundesliga. Football fans also can follow all of the latest Bundesliga action on Bundesliga.com and via the official Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram channels.
About Amazon Web Services
For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 84 Availability Zones (AZs) within 26 geographic regions, with announced plans for 24 more Availability Zones and eight more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.
About the Bundesliga
The Bundesliga is the top professional association football league in Germany. The league was established in 1963 and comprises 18 teams which operate on a system of promotion and relegation with the Bundesliga 2. The Bundesliga is broadcast on television in over 200 countries and is operated by the DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga.
