Six Nations Rugby Commits To Smart Rugby Ball

Six Nations Rugby has announced a multi-year partnership with UK-based sports technology and data science business Sportable.

The new relationship will kick off on Saturday 29^th October when Scotland face Australia at the start of the 2022 Autumn Nations Series.

The match will see the introduction of the Sportable Gilbert smart rugby ball, which forms the basis of the new partnership. The ball will provide performance and fan engagement insights via augmented reality graphics providing real-time match statistics such as such as kick distance, pass distance and territory gained. This is achieved by the ball communicating with wireless beacons around the pitch.

The statistics will be presented across broadcast and Six Nations digital channels.

The ball is in line to be used across all Autumn Nations Series, Guinness Six Nations and TikTok Women’s Six Nations Championship matches.

Sportable Founder and CEO Dugald Macdonald, said, “We are extremely excited and proud to announce this landmark collaboration between Sportable and Six Nations. We have been hard at work over the past few years to bring a new level of innovation and insight into elite sport, to have an opportunity to bring that to life with a forward-thinking organisation like Six Nations and their member unions is truly exciting.

“Key to our involvement is the introduction of the smart rugby ball, which is now firmly entrenched at the highest level of the game and offers deep new insights and enhanced value to Six Nations Rugby, their partners, participating teams and ultimately the fans.

“We are excited to see the smart rugby ball data come to life across multiple platforms over the coming months and working with Six Nations to further advance our joint offering to teams and fans over years to come.”

Julie Paterson, Director of Rugby at Six Nations Rugby, added, “As a fan focused organisation, Six Nations Rugby is constantly exploring opportunities to give fans the best possible experience through our Championships and events.

“The partnership with Sportable, and their smart ball technology is testament to this ambition. To be able to offer fans real time data and insight that can help bring to life the game in an innovative way, is going to be incredibly exciting, and everyone involved is looking forward to seeing this translate through our extensive international broadcast coverage.

For the teams, players and coaches, the opportunity to provide them with a new strand of information offers the potential to support training through to on pitch decision making, which we are incredibly excited to see develop.”

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