Creating New Classes Of Sports Stats With Sensors
By Jerry Useem

(FORTUNE Magazine) – For Tony Amonte, the measure of his success in the National Hockey League this season was simple enough: He scored 44 goals, second-best in the NHL. But there are other achievements the Chicago Blackhawks star can't quantify so easily. Like, say, the exact force with which he slammed his opponents' faces into the boards.

Amonte may soon have a hand in fixing that. He's an investor in Trakus, a startup in Somerville, Mass., that plans to outfit professional athletes with radio transmitters that'll generate a new, highly arcane class of sports statistics.

Founded in 1997 by Eric Spitz, then a 27-year-old student at MIT's Sloan School, Trakus is developing what it immodestly touts as "the greatest technology ever introduced into the world of sports." (Has Spitz considered the baseball bat?) It consists of a transmitter--about the size of a small pancake, says Spitz--that fits snugly inside a regulation hockey or football helmet. Thirty times per second, eight antennae at the edge of the arena measure the transmitter's position in 3-D space, then feed the data to a truck parked just outside the stadium. A computer inside will then spit out a raft of newfangled statistics for the benefit of television commentators, coaches, and in-stadium displays.

Just when you were grasping the true meaning of "slugging percentage," you'll now have to get your mind around such concepts as "north/south ratio," which tracks forward yards gained versus yards run; and "quickness indicator," a measure of acceleration. As Buffalo Bills quarterback Doug Flutie gets flattened by a 300-pound lineman, John Madden could tell you how many g's Flutie hit the ground with, citing the "hit gauge."

Will the players feel okay about wearing homing beacons on their noggins? "If it's the wave of the future and will help boost TV ratings," says Amonte, "I think most of the players are for it." The Boston Bruins are tentatively committed to testing the technology next season. And the NHL is cautiously excited about a leaguewide introduction later on.

Finding a workable business model has been a little slipperier. Spitz's original idea was to put the transmitters in shopping carts to let supermarkets collect data on customers--an idea that was quickly shelved in favor of the sports concept. Only recently Spitz decided not to sell the equipment but to license it gratis and sell the data instead.

Yet with $4 million in the purse from angel investors, including several NHLers like Amonte, he's giddy with possibilities: say, digital broadcasters using the data to recreate games that fans can watch and "play" at the same time. Or videogame makers using it to make their offerings more realistic. Spitz also envisions expanding beyond hockey and football--though he concedes that a few technical details will need to be ironed out. "They don't wear helmets in golf," he says.

--Jerry Useem