“Things are evolv­ing every day.” Such a com­mon phrase to­day.

The com­pe­ti­tion is al­ways in­creas­ing, every­one’s look­ing for ways to im­prove. Ath­letes and the cadre of pro­fes­sion­als who sur­round them are al­ways look­ing for an edge over their op­po­nents. Ad­vances in tech­nol­o­gy have now made a whole new class of in­for­ma­tion read­i­ly avail­able to ath­letes, coach­es, train­ers, and even fans. It’s called bio­met­rics, the sci­ence of mea­sur­ing and an­a­lyz­ing da­ta col­lect­ed from the body, such as heart rate or hor­mone lev­els. Bio­met­rics is not new to us but the ad­vanced fea­tures are in­deed in­trigu­ing.

One area im­pact­ed by bio­met­ric da­ta is ath­lete safe­ty. For in­stance, bio­met­ric gloves have been oblig­a­tory racewear for F1 dri­vers since 2019. The gloves are equipped with a pulse oxime­try sen­sor to mea­sure heart rate and blood oxy­gen dur­ing races. The da­ta are trans­mit­ted di­rect­ly from the cars to near­by med­ical teams, al­low­ing them to mon­i­tor dri­vers’ vi­tals re­mote­ly dur­ing the race and ac­cess life-sav­ing in­for­ma­tion in the event of an ac­ci­dent.

Oth­er bio­met­ric de­vices are de­signed to pre­vent in­juries and max­i­mize train­ing. In 2016, the Play­ing Rules Com­mit­tee for Ma­jor League Base­ball ap­proved two bio­met­ric de­vices for these pur­pos­es: The Mo­tus Base­ball Sleeve mea­sures stress on pitch­ers’ el­bows, while the Zephyr Bio­har­ness mon­i­tors heart and breath­ing rates. The hope is that these tech­nolo­gies will help de­tect habits that could lead to in­juries.

In­di­vid­ual ath­letes have al­so been ex­plor­ing bio­met­rics to in­form their train­ing in var­i­ous sports in­clud­ing foot­ball, bas­ket­ball, track and field, crick­et, squash and more.

Leslie Sax­on, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor for the USC Cen­ter for Body Com­put­ing, stud­ies hu­man per­for­mance at its ex­tremes, in elite ath­letes as well as mil­i­tary pop­u­la­tions. She says the goal of the work is to help high per­form­ers func­tion bet­ter, longer, and with­out in­juries.

“We’re not just try­ing to pre­serve an in­di­vid­ual in the short term,” she says. “We want meth­ods that will pre­serve that in­di­vid­ual in­to their post-elite ath­lete life. One has to think about what is go­ing to ul­ti­mate­ly af­fect the health of that in­di­vid­ual—in­clud­ing their nu­tri­tion­al, emo­tion­al, and cog­ni­tive needs—over the long term.”

Of course, there is the con­cern that the boom in new apps and wear­able tech­nol­o­gy has re­sult­ed in many un­proven and untest­ed prod­ucts. There is an as­sump­tion that the de­vices will pro­vide in­for­ma­tion di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to ath­lete per­for­mance, but more da­ta do not al­ways trans­late to more use­ful in­for­ma­tion. Train­ers and coach­es need to know how to in­ter­pret the da­ta and what ac­tions to take based on it.

Ex­perts pre­dict that in­ter­est in and adop­tion of bio­met­rics will con­tin­ue to in­crease as the tech­nol­o­gy ad­vances. Costs will go down and more op­tions will be­come avail­able to ath­letes and leagues.

It is be­ing said that ath­let­ic train­ers and con­di­tion­ing coach­es, will have to be­come bet­ter ed­u­cat­ed about these prod­ucts and what they can do. “At this point, the tech­nol­o­gy is new and ex­cit­ing and it seems like any tech­nol­o­gy is adding some­thing of val­ue,” Sax­on says. “In­stead of just say­ing, ‘Wow, this tech­nol­o­gy is cool and will give us tons of in­for­ma­tion,’ they will have to look at the val­ue of the in­for­ma­tion mea­sured and how it will make the ath­lete or the team bet­ter.”

Sax­on agrees that for bio­met­ric da­ta to be use­ful, it has to go be­yond just da­ta col­lec­tion. “We can’t just tell elite ath­letes they are elite. They know that” she says. “They are look­ing for an edge. We have to be able to de­liv­er some­thing that they, or their coach­es, did not al­ready know.”

But bio­met­ric da­ta is not just aimed at im­prov­ing ath­letes. It’s geared to­wards the fan ex­pe­ri­ence al­so. Fans of the Bel­gian club RWD Molen­beek can now ac­cess their home sta­di­um via bio­met­ric recog­ni­tion. The ser­vice comes by way of Zetes, and thanks to fa­cial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy from Pana­son­ic. For RWD Molen­beek fans, this means that when sea­son tick­ets are or­dered on­line, they’ll be asked to up­load a self­ie. They will then be matched to that im­age by face-scan­ning cam­eras when they come to the sta­di­um for a match, au­to­mat­i­cal­ly grant­i­ng them ac­cess.

Last Oc­to­ber, Alder­shot Town Foot­ball Club be­gan us­ing Yoti to pro­vide team mem­bers with dig­i­tal play­er IDs. This made Alder­shot the first team in the UK’s Eng­lish Na­tion­al League to make the switch to dig­i­tal IDs in a move that will help stream­line some of its ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures as part of a broad­er dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Af­ter down­load­ing the Yoti app, play­ers can now use their phones to present their dig­i­tal IDs to gain ac­cess to re­strict­ed train­ing fa­cil­i­ties, or to share COVID-19 test re­sults with­out dis­clos­ing any oth­er per­son­al in­for­ma­tion.

The tech­nol­o­gy could al­so be used to fa­cil­i­tate con­tract sign­ings.

Bio­met­ric com­pa­ny Clear was hired by MLS clubs Los An­ge­les FC and San Jose Earth­quakes to ex­pe­dite en­try in­to the sta­di­ums, de­vel­op­ing “bio­met­ric-pow­ered sta­di­um ex­pe­ri­ences, in­clud­ing bio­met­ric tick­et­ing and bio­met­ric pay­ments for con­ces­sions and mer­chan­dise pur­chas­es,” the com­pa­ny ex­plained in a state­ment.

Bio­met­ric da­ta has the po­ten­tial to keep ath­letes safer and health­i­er, max­i­mize ath­let­ic train­ing, aug­ment the fan ex­pe­ri­ence, and pro­vide in­sights that could win or lose games. And with prospec­tive ben­e­fits like those, the rush to col­lect and an­a­lyze bio­met­ric da­ta will on­ly in­crease. Tech­nol­o­gy is here to stay and im­prov­ing rapid­ly. Hu­mans—coach­es, train­ers, ath­letes, bet­tors—will have to be­come savvi­er to nav­i­gate this new da­ta land­scape.

Ed­i­tor's Note

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com.