The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) announced a multi-year deal with Second Spectrum, a Genius Sports technology solution, which will make it the first US women’s professional sports league with leaguewide 3D tracking data.
The Second Spectrum system is set to launch with the tip-off of the WNBA’s 2024 regular season on May 14. An array of cameras arranged in each WNBA arena will collect 3D player pose and ball-tracking data that will unlock new coaching and front-office capabilities for WNBA teams, including player and team analysis, coaching strategy tools, and more robust sports science capabilities.
“Deploying state-of-the-art optical tracking technology through Genius Sports will deliver rich data to our teams that they can leverage to enhance player performance while informing in-game strategy and enable a new wave of insights and media elements for fans,” said WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert of the partnership.
This technology will take WNBA statistics to a whole new level. Teams will be able to measure advanced analytics like shot quality, shooter impact, paint touches, play-type efficiencies, points per chance, contest quality, and other defensive matchup data as well as metrics quantifying player performance such as maximum speeds and total distance covered.
WNBA Head Of League Operations Bethany Donaphin told AP that she would have loved to have had access to such robust data when she was playing for the New York Liberty:
“There are things that this data can unlock that our analysis couldn’t before.”
NBA and NFL work
Donaphin also said that the league worked with their NBA counterparts to bring this to life since the NBA has used this sort of technology for more than a decade. For now, the technology will only be available to the teams, but the data could eventually fuel something like Genius Sports' BetVision product which allows online betting sites to offer live video streams that are integrated with bet slips and statistical insights.
Genius Sports’ operating partners that used BetVision during the 2023 NFL season saw an 87% increase in total handle, so perhaps the Second Spectrum deal offers the WNBA a way to enhance the fan experience by providing more stats to wager on.
Donaphin said “I don’t think we’re there yet” when it comes to using this new data partnership to enhance TV broadcasts, but time will tell how the league seeks to further capitalize on these next-gen statistics.
