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Hawk-Eye enters the US market  

It is early August 2003 and Paul Hawkins gets the news he's been waiting for: he's finally won his first tennis grand slam. The inventor of Hawk-Eye has seen his ball tracking system win, for the first time, a clean sweep of tennis tournaments across the year. He has just signed the contract to provide it to broadcasters for the US Open, to add to previous wins this year at Wimbledon, Roland Garros and the Australian Open, as well as the Queen's Club and ATP Masters tour.

Hawkins doesn't have much time to celebrate, he's busy overseeing Hawk-Eye for UK free-to-air broadcaster Channel 4 and satellite station Sky's coverage of England against South Africa at Lords; in discussions with Japanese broadcasters about a new baseball application; and putting the final touches to a new Hawk-Eye virtual reality game.
It's just four years since the amateur cricket player, smarting from an unfair leg-before-wicket (LBW) dismissal, decided he could use the latest computer technology to get a definitive answer on difficult umpiring decisions.

Now, 2003 looks like being the year when Hawk-Eye finally comes of age and crosses over from being a key aspect of UK cricket coverage to being a must-have for any major sports broadcaster covering tennis and cricket around the world.
Hawkins developed his idea, which uses a series of sophisticated cameras linked software originally developed to track missiles, and then began trying to convince broadcasters to take a look. The BBC, the traditional home of cricket, showed little enthusiasm and the idea looked out for a duck. But then Hawkins had a stroke of luck.
Independent production company Sunset+Vine had just won the contract to produce the test cricket coverage for Channel 4, who had snatched the rights from under the BBC's noses with a promise to liven up coverage. The producers immediately saw the potential attraction of Hawk-Eye for a television audience eager for more statistics and new computer trickery. Sunset+Vine's parent company, The Television Corporation, provided the financial backing for Hawkins to get the system on air for the 2001 test match series.
Hawk-Eye was an immediate hit with viewers, commentators and players alike. One early supporter was the Australian cricket tycoon, Kerry Packer, who was so enthused by the technology that he asked Hawkins to install a special telephone hotline to his office so that he could get an immediate personal replay. Since then, Hawk-Eye has won a clutch of awards, including the Royal Television Society award for technical innovation, and contributed to Sunset+Vine's 16 awards for its cricket coverage.

Expansion plans

While gathering up the awards, Hawkins was quietly working on expanding the software applications to see if they could work for other sports. The Television Corporation, which had the contract to televise the Stella Artois tennis tournament through its outside broadcast subsidiary Visions, provided further backing for him to develop Hawk-Eye tennis.
The trials were successful, and Hawk-Eye was used for the first time at the Queen's Club in 2002. Since then, it has been used increasingly at major tennis tournaments around the world, including for the first time, Wimbledon this year where pressure from viewers and broadcasters helped persuade the All England Lawn Tennis Club to overcome its skepticism about the technology.
Hawk-Eye uses five cameras set up at different angles around a tennis court or cricket ground that record the trajectory of the ball through the air. All these recordings are then sent by wireless technology to one computer, where the software combines all this information, frame by frame to give a three dimensional flight trajectory of the ball accurate to four millimetres.
Depending on the application, the system can use the trajectory of the ball to determine whether it would have hit the stumps in LBW decisions and the pace and accuracy of a bowler's deliveries. In tennis, it can give a definitive answer as to whether a ball was in our out, the speed and trajectory of every ball in every rally and how a player places his or her serves around the court.
All these statistics are delivered almost instantaneously to the commentary box and viewer, which is why the system has proved such a hit and now an integral part of television coverage of the two sports.
Paul Davies, executive producer of the BBC's tennis coverage is pleased with the benefits to

the broadcaster: "It's a fantastic tool which helps us offer genuine insight into the game in terms of direction of shots, consistency and tactics...it will give a new perspective on our coverage," he says, adding "I think it's almost inevitable that it will move into other sports."
Wimbledon this year, and on court a player is disputing a line call. He looks up to the commentary box where he knows the broadcasters will be looking at the replay. "Where's Hawk-Eye when you need it?" John McEnroe demands. A few seconds later and the answer comes through. "Clearly in." McEnroe shouts with obvious relish. "Pixel dust flew up!"

The power of instant replay

This instant replay ability provides another potential use for Hawk-Eye albeit a hugely controversial one. The replays can be sent directly using wireless technology to hand-held devices such as PDAs, so that the umpires could get a definitive answer to a difficult decision, where they may not have been ideally placed to come up with the right answer themselves.
Jeff Foulser, chief executive of The Television Corporation, acknowledges that using technology in this way is a potential minefield. However, he insists that the sports authorities have nothing to worry about. Hawk-Eye very often backs up the decisions umpires have made and shows just how professional they are under immense pressure, he says. Also, in an increasingly money-dominated sport where going out of a tournament on a wrong call can mean the loss of huge sums to the players, sponsors and even broadcasters banking on a big audience for national favourites, allowing Hawk-Eye to back up the umpire could help any umpire or tournament organisers facing legal complaints.
Many players themselves agree. Writing about Hawk-Eye's success at Wimbledon this year, Pat Cash says: "Hawk-Eye would be welcomed by the majority of competitors. We could be talking about winning or losing something as big as the Wimbledon title, which makes me question why every possible aid is not used."
Of course, one of the reasons Hawk-Eye isn't used everywhere is its additional cost over and above the costs of sports rights and the actual outside broadcast itself. Foulser says that the company is looking to overcome this through investigating the possibilities of sponsorship for the application. "We're looking for either a global partner or a series of regional backers who would provide the money to pay for Hawk-Eye to be included in a television package, in return for on air sponsorship mentions and possibly branding," he says. "This would be perfect for a technology company wanting to associate themselves with cutting edge technology and with the all important sports viewers who are often the same young males who buy computer applications and games."
As Hawkins flies off to the US to set up the system and introduce it for the first time to the US market, it seems a safe bet that Hawk-Eye will be repeating its grand slam for a second year running and has the potential to echo his idol McEnroe's domination of the game.

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Page from ArkSports' Sport and Technology (www.sportandtechnology.com) on 2008-11-23 : Case Study: Hawk-Eye enters the US market - September 2003 : http://www.sportandtechnology.com/features/0077.html