AWS’ Next Gen Stats, is the capture of real time location data, speed and acceleration for every player, every play on every inch of a football field. Sensors throughout the stadium track tags placed on players' shoulder pads, charting individual movements within inches.

Through the use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags in player equipment and the football, Next Gen Stats captures a variety of real-time location, speed, and acceleration data. The data is analyzed by AWS in real time and then broadcast live to contextualize, predict and show movement on the field through data. The result for fans is a revolutionized experience and a whole new way to watch the NFL and get closer to the players than ever before. This data was then translated by the NBC broadcast crews during game play, then presented live to fans on TV; bringing a new dimension to the game.

For more than a decade, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 100 fully featured services for computing, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Our challenge was to harness the bundle of services that AWS offers, and communicate how powerful, fast and innovative their platform is. Statistics have played a major role in sports for years -- but our challenge was to create a new data set, one never seen before to completely transform how the NFL is broadcast and consumed. And we did it all harnessing the power of AWS.

The Next Gen stats system creates a variety of unique player and team predictive analytics for every game such as a receiver’s ability to get open and an offensive line’s ability to protect the quarterback. The data then visualizes the action on the field live, uncovering deeper insights into the action of the players. The result is that both the team and fan experience is completely changed by offering a broader range of advanced statistics that add a new dimension to the game that had ever been possible before. Then, every week during its Sunday Night Live Football broadcasts, predictive data from a specific play or event was analyzed live in the broadcast truck, and presented to the audience during the game through the announcers and graphics -- enabling fans to understand the power of AWS and enjoy the sport in a new way.

Next Gen stats has changed NFL broadcasts each week in terms of how fans understand, appreciate, and enjoy the sport. The weekly integration reached over 19 million fans every week; totaling 400+ million impressions over the season. The platform on Sunday Night football generated an additional 2.2MM searches online for AWS throughout the season, helping to contribute to AWS’ +45% jump in growth to a total revenue of $7.43 billion in Q4 2018 (when the games aired).