NTT has partnered with Zwift, an online training and racing platform for athletes, to deliver data analytics for the UCI Cycling Esports World Championships. NTT will use its experience collaborating with the Amaury Sport Organisation (A.S.O.) to bring data analytics to the Tour de France, as well as a previous partnership with Zwift to host the first Virtual Tour de France in July 2020. A 40 million fans watched the event, NTT said.
NTT now plans to bring its expertise in data-led storytelling to esports at the first Cycling Esports event sanctioned by a sports governing body. With Zwift, racers physically cycle but the game takes place in a virtual world.
NTT connects to the Zwift platform, retrieving the real-time data from all the riders taking part, and then aggregates and analyzes these to provide new insights for viewers. NTT will use algorithms originally developed for the Tour de France to identify and track the groups of riders taking part in the race so that viewers will have a better understanding of the race as it evolves. All this data processing is done in near real-time, with the broadcast graphics able to show events within 500 milliseconds of them happening.
NTT will share analytics on which riders are best at playing the game and able to get the highest speed for their power – a new Zwift Efficiency rating. All this means that, in addition to seeing competitors’ speed, power and heart rate in a particular instant – which fans have been able to do for all Zwift events up till now – fans can now see the competitors’ average power, speed, watts per kg and efficiency over the last few minutes and since the start of the race, NTT added.
The delivery of the race is supported by NTT’s suite of managed services. NTT has used its Intelligent Workplace services, with the technical delivery team spread across three continents and able to work remotely via its collaboration technology.
NTT’s partnership with Zwift will extend to the Premier Division of the Zwift Racing League, the platform’s grassroots league which runs until 30th April 2021. This community-based racing league is open to riders of all abilities. 9,400 unique racers took part across 232 events in season one, riding 1.02 million miles and climbing 12.9 million meters. Now specialist racers in eRacing are emerging from the 1,000 teams, based in 125 countries, that registered for the first season.
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