The Premier League will ditch its controversial VAR system for the 2024/25 football season, instead relying on dozens of iPhones dotted around the pitch to help officials make an offside call.
Yes, some of the most controversial calls of the next season will be determined by the same triple-camera system used by millions of Britons to photograph their summer holidays.
Premier League players and fans alike have criticised the current VAR system, which was rolled out for the 2019/20 football season
PRESS ASSOCIATION
The system, developed by London-based company Genius Sports, uses the rear-mounted cameras on dozens of iPhones to capture high-frame-rate video up to 200 frames-per-second. These handsets are dotted around the pitch to capture the action from multiple angles, which is stitched together by a machine-learning system known internally as "Dragon".
Genius Sports says its offside technology is capable of building a three-dimensional render of each player, their exact location throughout the match, and the offline line running down the pitch. Officials can watch where all the players are in relation to the offline line at any point during the game.
The UK firm already provides technological solutions to improve football for viewers, including real-time dynamic graphics superimposed on footage from the pitch, like colourful trails that follow the ball in replays.
Genius Sports believes its iPhone-powered system will be more accurate than previous solutions.
Offside violations aren't always clear-cut, especially when officials and cameras don't have an uninterrupted view of the players. That's something that the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) was designed to solve when it was introduced five years ago.
But Premier League players and fans have become frustrated with VAR systems due to extensive delays, human error and miscommunications from the VAR hub triggering the wrong calls, and concerns about the precision of in-game rulings due to limitations in the existing technology.
Genius Sports says it'll use a minimum of 28 iPhones at every stadium in the Premier League, although more might be needed in certain locations. The system requires an iPhone 14 or newer, which introduced a larger 48-megapixel sensor capable of capturing more detail. Using all of this data, Dragon can track somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 individual points on every player at all times.
Current VAR systems monitor between 30 - 50 data points on each player.
The UK-based firms will be housed in a waterproof case equipped with cooling fans and a power source. Up to four iPhones can be snapped together in a single mount, Genius Sports exclusively told Wired in a deep-dive on the incoming technology.
Genius Sports' system tracks 7,000 and 10,000 individual data points on players as they move across the pitch
GENIUS SPORTS
According to sources familiar with the new setup, humans will still be the ones making the final decision on all offside calls albeit with some assistance from these new AI tools. The exact date of when Genius Sports' iPhone-powered system will launch is yet to be confirmed, although sources speaking to Wired say it'll debut before the end of 2024 and be used for the entirety of 2025.
Will you be able to tell when VAR is switched for the humble iPhone 14? The ultimate test of Genius Sports' data-rich new tracking system will be when the first contentious call comes up in the new season. Stay tuned.
