Microsoft and the NFL extend their collaboration in technology

Microsoft Surface and Microsoft Teams are two tools used to improve communications and interactions of National Football League teams.

The National Football League (NFL) announced on March 3 an extension of the collaboration with Microsoft to explore all the possibilities offered by   Surface devices and Microsoft Teams, the center for teamwork in Office 365.

Here, NFL first partnered with Microsoft in 2013 in a five-year deal for $400 million nearly, according to Sportspromedia, though it was not explained to the media if this extension changed those figures.

In 2014, two new Microsoft products were introduced, the Band Line View System and Surface drugs. Preceding to these innovations coaches received black and white images of offensive and defensive formations by fax to analyze on the band lines between each series and then they get high-resolution color images transmitted immediately to the tablets allowing them to zoom in or draw on the screen while giving instructions to their players as given.

The NFL explains that the tablets remain in the league during the week so that the teams cannot modify them and are delivered to the teams before the start of each match, though they are called “tablets,” they are configured so that computers cannot access the Internet or install anything that can give them a competitive advantage; they can only be used to review, for example, plays during training and which can be used at a certain time during the official game. The league picks up the tablets when the game ends and saves them until the following week.

In August 2017, there was the first case of repetition of a revised play on a Surface device. Replays that could only be seen on a TV camera, especially placed for these cases, expired. It was a slow process, which greatly delayed the game.

Now, in 2020 and according to Microsoft, these are some of the practical examples of their new contributions: the New York Jets use Teams to inform team alignments, in real time. The Kansas City Chiefs, Super Bowl champions, use the platform to coordinate travel plans between the club’s scouts (those in charge of getting talent in different parts of the country) and the Miami Dolphins to plan the sales business at the Super Bowl LIV, which took place at Hard Rock Stadium last February.

Teams are a collaboration tool that competes with Slack. Microsoft said last November that it had about 20 million daily active users for Teams, compared to Slack’s 12 million.

In addition, on the Surface devices you can see repetitions almost in real time, so that they are reviewed by technicians, players, in the field itself, which helps them to make quick decisions, such as player changes or strategies.

Organization Microsoft said there are currently more than 2000 Surface devices and 170 Windows servers deployed in 35 stadiums where the NFL is played.

“We have worked together to innovate the way you compete with Surface devices to boost instant replay and game review for players and coaches,” said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of modern life, search and Microsoft devices, in a statement Press