The two titans of daily fantasy sports (DFS), DraftKings and FanDuel, have new competition. Recently, Yahoo! has joined the daily fantasy goings on in addition to their traditional fantasy sports leagues. The market growth of DFS sites has taken off on a meteoric rise, and according to Forbes there was an 847 percent rise in participation from September 2013 to September 2014. As the newest option in a popular area, Yahoo!’s approach is slightly different than both DraftKings or FanDuel.

Right off the bat, the aesthetics of Yahoo! appears similar to FanDuel. From left to right, we have the Yahoo!, FanDuel and DrafKings interfaces (click to embiggen).

Beyond the layout, Yahoo! has seemingly drawn influence from both FanDuel and DraftKings for the gameplay itself. Just like in DK, Yahoo! allows users to draft up to 10 players rather than the nine of FD, the difference being two pitchers in the former and one in the latter. Despite the identical rosters to DK, Yahoo!’s player prices are much different than anything we’ve seen before.

Rather than use the $50,000 or $35,000 salary allotment of DraftKings and FanDuel respectively, Yahoo! has a $200 scaled budget. As a percentage, the prices aren’t terribly different, but I found myself having a surprisingly difficult time adjusting. Of course, the prices are different because the scoring is different as well.

With the same left to right as before, the following picture shows the scoring differences between the three sites.

Where both FanDuel and DraftKings have negative stats for batters — -0.25 points for any out on FD or -2 points for a caught stealing on DK — Yahoo! doesn’t have a way of punishing poor batting or base running performances. Pitching statistics are even more varied as wins are very heavily valued in Yahoo! at eight points compared to four points for DK and FD. Yahoo!’s only negative pitching category is giving up earned runs, same as FanDuel, to the tune of -1 point per earned run surrendered. For example, let’s say a pitcher costs 20 percent of your budget in any of the three site ($40 in Y!,$ 7,000 in FD and $10,000 in DK) . He records a win after going seven innings, gives up two runs on a pair of solo shots, plus two other hits, two walks and strikes out seven batters, his point totals for each site are:

Yahoo!: 30.6 points
FanDuel: 16 points
DraftKings: 23.35 points

Thanks to the numerous negative pitching stats in DratfKings (hits and walks in this example specifically), you get hands down the least bang for your buck with pitchers compared to FanDuel and Yahoo!. The latter in particular places a massive emphasis on wins at eight points. Such huge upside in pitches in Yahoo! with minimal downside — no negative points for any hitter outcomes and only being penalized on pitcher earned runs — makes stacking your Yahoo! lineup with the best pitchers in line for the win is hands down the best option. This isn’t a flaw, a strength or a weakness on Yahoo!’s behalf, but it is certainly something to exploit.

The biggest issue I have with Yahoo!’s current layout is the lack of weather information for each game. DraftKings at least displays weather info at the top of the screen when you enter a contest.

FanDuel leads the way with a full weather forecast for each game, including chance of rain by percentage and if the game will be played in an open stadium, retractable roof or dome.

I’d always recommend cross checking the weather for the games as in any DFS format it hurts to lose a batter to a rain out and losing a starting pitcher is like throwing money away. Adding in weather seems like something fairly easy, as Yahoo! already has an entire page dedicated to weather around the world.

Beyond the weather related issues, Yahoo! has a bigger concern when it comes to attracting players to its new daily fantasy area. During its launch, Yahoo! promised a $22,000 prize pool, guaranteed even if the contest wasn’t filled. At a $1 minimum entry for the 10,000 player league, it sounded like a good way to gather new DFS players. Unfortunately the wording tripped up many players and saw the $22,000 guaranteed prize pool would be split up if the contest wasn’t filled, and not the way Yahoo! broke it down. The way $22,000 was guaranteed was awarding $2 to the 29th-10,0000 place finishers. So, if it the contest was full, then yes, the full $22,000 would have been handed out. Unfortunately calling a prize pool $22,000 and then not delivering the full amount flies in the face of every other DFS league or entry I’ve ever entered.

For now I’ll stick with DraftKings or to a lesser extend FanDuel to fulfill my DFS cravings. I know they pay out what is advertised, I’m familiar with the scoring, and having to open one less tab for immediate weather reports makes it convenient.

A “day without sports” does not a week without sports-technology news make, so here are the sports-tech stories we found interesting this week.

Scientists in Switzerland announced the inaugural Cybathon, an international competition for bionic athletes. Unlike the Paralympics, the overriding emphasis of Cybathon is less on athletic achievement and more on encouraging the development of new robotic technologies that will aid those with physical limitations in their daily lives. The first Cybathon will take place in Zurich in the fall of 2016.

Audience streams for gaming tournaments have by and large been only in the first-person view. But a new company called Super League Gaming is hoping to bring a bigger, world view to their tournaments. They are partnering with major movie theater chains to display a broader view of the game’s environment on the big screen.

In case you had any doubts about the health of the daily fantasy industry, popular DFS site FanDuel just raised another $275 million, and is now valuated at a cool billion.

NHL 15, while still really fun to play, was a bit of a letdown in many areas. EA is making a push to improve the experience with their next offering, and offered a video showing some of the improvements coming to the game. It’s slated to drop on September 15.

We cover plenty in the way of wearable athletic technology in this space, but when it comes to golf, you probably already have an effective one in your pocket. Well-known golf instructor and former Tiger Woods coach Hank Haney has an active Twitter account, and all you need to do to receive expert analysis of your game is tweet Haney a video of that Tasmanian-Devil mess you call a golf swing and wait for him to respond with some advice, which he dishes out in his spare time.

Football season looms ever closer, and with it the danger of traumatic brain injuries. Doctors at the University of Miami, together with software company Neuro Kinetics and involvement from the U.S. Department of Defense, have developed concussion-detecting goggles, which they are testing on Hurricane athletes this summer. One of the practical advantages of the goggles is that they are portable: the apparatus fits in a backpack, meaning it’s easy to bring them to away games too. The university was one of the winners of the NFL’s second Head Health Challenge, an incentive program to support the development of brain-protection technology, and the $500,000 award has provided the bulk of funding to date for the development of the goggles.

Hawk-Eye for the masses? While nobody’s proposing a populist archery revival (to our knowledge), a French company is developing Mojjo, a camera-based tennis analysis system designed to be used by amateur players. While a relatively inexpensive, single-camera system like Mojjo won’t compete with the most advanced, multi-camera systems the pros use, it still appears capable of providing amateur players with plenty of insightful feedback.

And finally, to put this one on ice, rumor has it that some NHL teams have begun to use the player-tracking system the league debuted at the All-Star Game earlier this year. Unlike the NBA’s SportsVU system, which requires the installation of an array of cameras in each arena, the NHL’s Sportsvision program works by tracking specialized equipment each player wears under his uniform, which also can transmit biometric data like heart rate.

Like your work week, this News Roundup is ending. Have a good weekend, and be excellent to each other.

Most of the attention in the NBA right now is focused off the court, as NBA teams and free agents continue to negotiate. Recently, though, we saw the start of actual play in the NBA summer leagues, where the new arrivals included Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow–and some new tech for the refs.

This summer, NBA referees are experimenting with Bluetooth-esque wireless headsets to quickly communicate with each other across the court. The headsets, which were first tested in the D-League this spring, also allow the three-man crew to confer with an outside reviewer–this summer, that’s a courtside ‘sideline supervisor’, but down the road the headsets could provide instant contact with the NBA’s replay center in Seacaucus, N.J.

Veteran NBA referee Scott Foster, who served as a sideline supervisor during testing in the D-League, had good things to say about the referee headsets in an interview with NBA.com:

“[We can] hear them talking to one another and can understand when they’re telling one another, ‘Hey, I’m watching the ball right now.’ It’s easier, it’s better than having them screaming across the floor. […] We’ll be able to communicate in loud arenas in critical situations during live play. We’ll be able to make sure the entire crew is at a higher level of concentration.”

As it turns out, though, the NBA is somewhat late to the game when it comes to testing referee headsets. The NFL, as you may recall, provided wireless headsets to on-field officials starting last fall, though their impact was a bit overlooked amid the megahype for the sideline Surface tablets. The NHL tested wireless communication for its referees as early as 2011, but ultimately chose not to move forward; off-ice headsets are instead used for reviewing goals. The MLB uses a similar system to handle instant replay.

One referee who tested the NHL’s system pointed out a few of the cons, including volume calibration (if a referee blows his whistle next to his mike, you can imagine the other refs would pick it up a little loud) and physical issues caused by the headset itself:

“[I]t blocks your hearing on one side. There was one time where a player came out of the penalty box and I couldn’t hear him coming, and he almost ran me over.”

Not to mention, of course, the problems with interference that any wireless headset could have, as has been known to happen with quarterback helmet receivers in the NFL.

So should we expect any huge referee communication developments in the major leagues? Probably not for the MLB — tradition aside, there just isn’t as much need for umpires to confer mid-play as there is elsewhere — though it wouldn’t be surprising to see the NHL give it another go. And of course, the jury’s still out on the NBA experiment. Though there has been discussion of introducing referee headsets in the NBA regular season as soon as 2015-16, no formal announcement has yet been made.

(Image via Keith Allison)

Over the previous weekend the 2015 Electronic Sports World Cup Counter-Strike: Global Offensive finals took place in Montreal. Multiple countries were represented and competed for the $75,000 prize pool, with $30,000 going the champions. Aside from technical setbacks, other controversy arose due usage of Adderall as well as in-game communication advantages. In a bit of a surprise, North American team Cloud9 won their group and advanced to the finals, though former Cloud9 member Kory “Semphis” Friesen gave a candid interview with Mohan “Launders” Govindasamy where Friesen said how common it is to find Adderall usage. In a separate interview, current Cloud9 member Ryan “fREAKAZOiD” Abadir had strong comments regarding other teams listening in to the Cloud9 in-game strategies.

Transcribing and editing the interview, Friesen said the following:

Friesen: Ha, I don’t even care. We were all on Adderall. Like, I don’t give a [expletive]. Like, it was pretty obvious if you listen to the comms. People can hate it or whatever, but.

Govindasamy: So everyone does Adderall on ESEA LAN, right?

Friesen: Yeah.

Govindasamy: Just throwing that out there, so you’re good.

As someone who has played Counter-Strike (and other games) in a relatively high level for a number of years — as well as someone who has taken their fair share of Adderall, this topic hits pretty close to certain times back in my younger days. While dealing with working part-time or going to school, plus a practice schedule that took up at least two hours per day, it was clear that time was in short supply. A teammate at the time suggested I go for an Adderall subscription. However, living in a college town I soon found out that it wasn’t that easy to get my hands on the pills without my own prescription.

The effects of being on Adderall didn’t seem big like much at first, but then about four hours passed and I hadn’t really noticed. It really did help me focus — almost to the point of tunnel vision — and in the context of esports, managing your tasks and focusing on the matters at hand is critical. For example, at big LAN event or venue, it’s a really loud atmosphere. With your in-game sounds turned up to hear every footstep, your teammates calling strategies, the announcers shouting and the crowd going bonkers, it’s incredibly easy to get distracted. In fact, recent controversy arose over communication. In somewhat recent events, more and more tournaments have been tapping into team’s in-game communications with so called Point-of-View streams, showing gameplay alongside the team’s comms.

Ryan “fREAKAZOiD” Abadir said in an interview how it’s unfair to English speaking teams. To quote Abadir:

Interviewer: What are your thoughts on it [POVs]?

Abadir: I think it’s great honestly. I love POVs, but, if you’re releasing it [live] and we can’t speak their language, then, how can we use it to our advantage when they [opposing teams] can use it [POVs] to their advantage? So release it after we’re done playing.

ESWC had teams from Ukraine, Sweden, Germany, France, China, Brazil, South Africa and Australia, along with Canada and the United States, so a multitude of languages could be found. Abadir’s interview was actually in regards to the previous weekend’s Electronic Sports League tournament, but that also boasted an international lineup where French, Swedish, Polish, Finnish, Portuguese and of course English were spoken. League of Legends releases post-match communication highlights, and tends to be careful to limit the amount of strategy given away at any time.

Is the ability to listen in on other teams’ communications cheating? Is it unfair for players to be taking Adderall? There are some fuzzy lines being skirted by major esports brands. Without pressure from sponsors or an overarching governing body, it doesn’t seem like any significant policy change will be in place for Adderall usage or POV streams. Despite the rapidly rising popularity, esports still have a long way to go when it comes to rules and regulations.

(Header image via ESWC)

Presumably you’ve got some data. Maybe it’s PITCHf/x data, maybe it’s just a bunch of data points, and you want those represented in a heat map. How do you make this happen? Well, in the spirit of leading with the lede:

Just make a scatterplot and reduce the opacity of the dots.

Yeah, it’s not elegant and it’s not truly a heat map — not algorithmically calculated like the fancy stuff Jeff makes at Baseball Heatmaps or the complex zone-grids over at FanGraphs. But, hey, for many people, it should be enough.

Let’s go ahead and make a faux heat map together!

Let’s start by ripping out some Expanded Tabled Data from Brooks Baseball and pasting that data in Excel.

For the sake of this post, we’re looking at Chris Heston’s no-hitter from June 9, 2015. Once we plop that data into Excel, we’ll want to cruise on down to the columns titled “px” and “pz.” Highlight these columns and plop in a scatterplot:

Right click on those blue diamonds and choose “Format Data Series.” Then, in the ensuing popup, browse to the “Marker Options” tab and change the markers to circles:

Then go to the “Marker Fill” section and choose “Solid fill.” We can then crank that transparency down:

Now we need to get rid of the pesky blue outline on each of the data points. Head to “Marker Line Color” and change that to “No line.”

So we’ve effectively got a heat map now. With a little bit of tweaking (moving the Y-axis to the left, changing the background color, making the markers bigger, and adding a quick little strikezone box — pretty much all of which you can accomplish through the Format Data Series window), we can get something like this:

I should mention the strike zone is just a rectangle shape I inserted, and is not necessarily accurate. I set the fill to No Fill and made the border a hashed line. For specific guidance on where to put the strike zone, I suggest using Mike Fast’s article here, and then just eyeballing a shape like I did here.

Heat maps are really most useful when you have many hundreds of data points, not just one hundred. For instance, here’s a little heat map (took less then three minutes to make) that shows the correlation between HR totals and wRC+ (offensive production) for individual hitters’ seasons from 2000 through 2014. I threw in a reference line for 100 wRC+ (league average) and a linear regression trendline (in the Chart Tools > Layout section):

Here’s another one. This one took more time to cook up, but it’s 1494 records — every NFL quarterback season since 1920 who’s thrown at least 10 touchdowns. So that’s a line for every QB for every season, thus Drew Brees — for his 2009 and 2011 seasons — occupies the top two spots in the completion percentage column.

Anyway, a heatmap here really helps us see the clustering around the middle:

The transparency on the markers is at 91% (you’ll want higher transparencies for certain colors and for more data).

It’s not technically a heat map, but if you need to throw together some data to make or display a point, the built-in tools in Excel will certainly work in a pinch.

Let’s kick the tires and light the fires, it’s the TechGraphs News Roundup. Here are the sports-tech stories we found interesting this week.

In case you somehow missed it, the Los Angeles Clippers and Dallas Mavericks both made serious plays for free-agent center DeAndre Jordan. It got weird. And emoji we involved, for some reason.

We take saving video game progress for granted, but back in the NES days, it was actually pretty special. FTW tells you the details of how you could save your Tecmo Super Bowl domination.

Speaking of video games, OOTP Baseball 16 is on sale! We’re big fans of the game here at TechGraphs. If haven’t gotten your own copy yet, here’s your chance.

Yahoo! is now offering daily fantasy. We previewed it a little on this very site, but expect a more in-depth review soon.

Unofficial friend of the FanGraphs family and overall stats warlock Daren Willman was profiled over at Rolling Stone. Check it out. He’s very modest about creating a sabermetric juggernaut.

Fitness trackers are nice, but don’t forget that’s tracking more than you might realize. Pro tip – leave it at home if you plan on committing a crime.

That’s all for this week. Have a good weekend, and be excellent to each other.

Like many of us, NFL defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul spent last weekend launching fireworks in the course of celebrating America’s birthday. Unlike most of us, hopefully, Pierre-Paul injured himself in the course of his combustible activities. While the extent of his injury, reported to be to one of his hands, initially was unknown, that quickly changed on Wednesday afternoon, when ESPN’s Adam Schefter posted a photograph purporting to be of a Pierre-Paul medical record, which indicated, among other things, that doctors had amputated one of the football player’s fingers.

The news of Pierre-Paul’s digital truncation would have come out before long– it’s difficult for linemen to hide severe hand injuries– even if Schefter’s source didn’t leak it, but in an era of ostensible medical privacy, Schefter’s tweet still was a bit stunning to see. Though laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act do not apply to journalists, Schefter’s actions still cross a line of decency and ethics.

One of the central concepts here is authorization, and as we move away from a time in which the bulk of athlete health information exists in conventional medical records and into a reality in which people, including those involved with sports teams, are embracing wearable athletic technology with the capability of pervasively gathering vast amounts of biometric data, authorization may become a moot issue for the monitored athletes. Seeing Pierre-Paul’s records pop up on Twitter struck some as “creepy” and “invasive,” but we may not be far from a situation in which athletes are indirectly pressured or directly asked to authorize broad disclosure of their health information.

In examining the “explosion of data and data collection” in the NBA for an ESPN The Magazine last fall, Pablo S. Torre and Tom Haberstroh wrote that

The boom officially began during work hours. Before last season, all 30 arenas installed sets of six military-grade cameras, built by a firm called SportVU, to record the x- and y-coordinates of every person on the court at a rate of 25 times a second . . . .

But to follow this logic to its conclusion is to understand why the scope of this monitoring is expanding, and faster than the public knows. Teams have always intuited that on-court productivity could be undermined by off-court choices — how a player exhausts himself after hours, for instance, or what he eats and drinks. Now the race is on to comprehensively surveil and quantify that behavior. NBA executives have discovered how to leverage new, ever-shrinking technologies to supervise a player’s sleeping habits, record his physical movements, appraise his diet and test his blood. . . .

“We need to be able to have impact on these players in their private time,” says Kings general manager Pete D’Alessandro. “It doesn’t have to be us vs. you. It can be a partnership.”

A lovely sentiment, at least in theory. But how long will it be until biometric details impact contract negotiations? How long until graphs of off-court behavior are leaked to other teams or the press? How long until employment hinges on embracing technology that some find invasive?

Baseball fans benefit from the deepening analysis of the sport by writers at places like FanGraphs, who can easily query in-game data troves like PITCH/fx and Statcast to support their work, and recent work on this site highlights the leading edge of wearable technology designed for baseball applications. Will data from players’ heart-rate monitors and FitBits ever be publicly searchable on BaseballSavant? Probably not. Will they be leaked when the player is in the midst of contract negotiations, as Pierre-Paul is, like drug test results and Wonderlic scores already are? The mere existence of the data certainly allows for that possibility.

Reports indicate that Pierre-Paul still plans to play football this season, although it’s unclear whether he will do so as a New York Giant. Even a strong season, wherever he winds up playing, is unlikely to make him the most accomplished nine-fingered performer in recent memory. As we sit on the cusp of the “explosion of data and data collection” in sports, though, we nevertheless may remember the leak of Pierre-Paul’s medical records as marking an important transition point on the path toward the more all-encompassing biometric-data-gathering world. And also the part about blowing off his finger with fireworks.

(Header image via maf04)

You didn’t seriously expect Yahoo Sports to ignore the daily fantasy boom, did you?

That’s the first line of Yahoo!’s introduction to their newly-announced daily fantasy offering. It’s bluntness leans on the cute side, but it’s now without merit. Daily fantasy sports (DFS) seem to be exploding in popularity, and the funding numbers certainly back that up.

Yahoo! is going up against two well-established DFS platforms — FanDuel and DraftKings. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses, but what they both possess is strong market saturation. FanDuel, especially, has been making a huge push in partnerships of late, teaming up with both Major League Baseball and NASCAR. And it’s become increasingly difficult to watch any kind of sporting event without seeing commercials for either DraftKings or FanDuel. Yahoo! has an uphill climb ahead of them if they plan on making a big dent in the DFS market. But they do have a few aces up their sleeve.

Their first advantage is that that are already a huge player in the fantasy sports market. It’s true that their reputation has taken some hits as of late, but they’re still one of the big providers. Millions of traditional fantasy players are already visiting Yahoo! on a frequent basis. All Yahoo! has to do is entice them to give DFS a try (or seven). Whereas FanDuel or DraftKings have to either pay for advertising or enter in partnerships if they want exposure on the popular fantasy sites. Yahoo! has it all baked right in. They just have to convince people it’s worth a shot.

While it hasn’t been up long enough to do a full review, a quick glance at the new DFS site shows a nice, clean interface. The nuts and bolts of it work much like DraftKings or FanDuel, but Yahoo! is taking a different approach with their salary caps. Instead of working within a $50,000 cap, Yahoo! works within a $200 limit. Of course, everything is prorated. Instead of dropping $9,500 on a top-notch player, Yahoo! users would spend something like $60 within their lower cap limit. This is most likely a stab at simplicity — making the the financials easier to manage across a whole roster. It’s a novel idea, one that separates them from the rest of the field. We’ll have to see how it plays out as the season goes on.

The first game of the NFL season comes on September 10th. The second half of the baseball season is clearly the proving grounds for Yahoo!’s new platform — a time to iron out all the bugs before the real money starts rolling in. Whether it works or not, you have to give Yahoo! credit for trying. DFS is eating into their user base and they’re making a move to try and stop the bleeding. Perhaps they can leverage their place in the market into some higher revenues. They certainly have the foothold. Being valued at $40 billion probably doesn’t hurt, either.

Brentford FC has been making waves in the ocean of soccer nerds over the past several seasons, most notably due to their owner — Matthew Benham — being a leading advocate for mathematical modeling in soccer. Benham is a nerd after my own heart, a man who studied at Oxford and eventually created his own betting company, Smartodds. Prior to Benham’s purchasing the team after the 2011-12 season, Brentford had been a third tier league, finishing in the middle of the pack of League One, two levels of competition below the English Premier League.

Since taking over ownership duties, Benham has influenced the club’s overall philosophy with his statistical stylings, including publicly acknowledging a head coaching change was partly due to philosophical differences. The coach in question, Mark Warburton, was at the helm as the club ascended from the third tier to the second tier of competition. Despite the success, Warburton found his contract was not to be renewed after the 2014-15 season. With Benham influencing the decision making process and Warburton handling the field level duties of a manager, Brentford managed to escape the third tier after being there for five seasons (2009-10 through 2013-14). The Bees broke through to the Championship, England’s second tier behind the EPL. More success followed in the 2014-15 season as Brentford finished fifth in the Championship and thus found themselves in the playoffs for the right to join the big clubs in arguably the best league in the world. While their playoff run ended earlier than The Bees would have liked, their overall success is not to be discounted.

Though the Bees fell short in the playoffs, their rapid ascent has made people take note, including their fans. Benham made time for a Q&A session last year on the Griffin Park Grapevine fan forum, and some of his answers were on point. In order to read the entire session you’ll have to register a free account on GPG, however below are just a few snippets of the Q&A (click to embiggen each picture).

As one would suspect, Benham is reluctant to give any details about the models and math at work, however his pasta preference is certainly concerning given penne reigns supreme.

Benham again doesn’t give away anything telling, but he quick to give traditional scouting and reports respect.

The context behind this answer is quite interesting given the history between Benham and Comolli. Damien Comolli came up as a scout with Arsenal, then worked his way up to director of football for Tottenham, in a similar way a baseball scout would climb the front office ladder. Comolli was dismissed after being at Tottenham for three seasons, landing as sporting director at Saint-Étienne. By the time he was relieved of duties there, Liverpool beckoned and he was appointed director of football strategy in November of 2010. After catching criticism regarding his negotiating abilities more than his scouting talents, Comolli and The Reds parted ways with the club near the end of 2011-12 season. The story, as written in Calvin’s book, is that Benham met with Comolli and was not impressed by any of the numbers Comolli showed him. Benham was also shocked at how Comolli asserted that his numbers and nothing else could be correct. Disagreements among analysts is nothing new, just look at the Red Sox and Mike Gimbel. He served as a specialist and consultant to then general manager Dan Duquette before Gimbel was, in his own words, used as a whipping boy.

Benham has generated his wealth using the best tools available to create the model in order to most accurately project outcomes. The best publicly available stats still leave much to be desired, however given Benham’s background, perhaps he and his team of analysts at Smarodds have broken down some of the walls surrounding statistics in soccer. While not a general manager or coach, as owner of a second-tier English soccer team, he certainly could be a pivotal character in the soccer realm. Just as Billy Beane came under fire for a number of his decisions, Benham has also been a target of the media. As the line near the end of Moneyball states, the first guy through the wall always gets bloodied. Always.

(Header image via Wikipedia)

The FanGraphs family took July 3rd off, so the News Roundup is appearing on your screens a little later than usual today. Here are some of the most interesting sports-tech tidbits we found this week.

Valve’s biggest DOTA 2 tournament, known as The International, announced that it will be offering $15 million in prize pool money. A challenging and leveling system being employed means that the total could actually go higher. This is where I would insert some overdone joke about nerds needing to do their hand stretches, but I feel like $15 million is an amount of money that prohibits me from making these comments anymore. Get that money, dorks.

Speaking of gamers, they will now be able to share their favorite frags and long-range, no-scope headshots to mobile YouTube users in their beloved 60fps format. This feature has been available on the desktop for a bit of time, but now anyone with a modern iOS or Android device can enjoy the carnage (or Minecraft videos) in their preferred frame rate.

Kansas City’s Kaufmann Stadium got a major WiFi network upgrade during the end of last season, and just in time to see the baseball club take the World Series to seven games. That postseason traffic proved to be a great test, it seems, and the Royals are seeing the benefits this season. Promotion of the new network is going strong, and new features like a parking payment system have been added.

Dish’s new Sling TV platform showed signs of promise when we saw it at CES, and the potential to be a real disruptor is still there. However, if more major outages keep happening, Dish will start having customer retention issues before their platform is even fully off the ground.

This technically counts as sports-tech news because tennis is a sport and slow-motion video utilizes technology, but I mostly just want to make sure all of you see what really happens to a tennis ball when a racket hits it.

The San Antonio Spurs’ Matt Bonner thinks he gave himself tennis elbow by upgrading to the iPhone 6 Plus. Seriously.

GoPro has announced their newest offering, the Hero 4 Session, and it looks pretty rad. It’s basically a waterproof cube camera that packs many of the features a modern GoPro has, but in a much smaller and lighter package. Gizmodo had a chance to play with an early-release version, and the reviews and results seem quite positive.

That’s it for this (last week). We’ll have another news roundup on Friday to get back on the regular schedule. Until then, be excellent to each other.