Williams has all that information. He’s spent the past three years developing new camera software that scans facial expressions to identify fan behaviors — think cheering, jeering, talking on a cell phone — in real time at a stadium. So a company can measure, for example, how many eyeballs are attached to a Jumbotron ad (are fans looking?) and how well it’s being received (are they laughing? Smiling? Fiddling on their phones and ignoring it?).
In other words, it’s like Nielsen ratings for crowd behavior at a sports event. Says one NFL executive, who watched Williams unveil his creation at the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference in early March: “That information is incredibly valuable.”
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