Exclusive: Fitbit wants to transform your kids’ hockey and football games

Fitbit already has a line of kids’ fitness trackers designed to help youngsters get more active, but a recently published patent found by TechRadar shows the company is thinking much, much bigger when it comes to minor sports.

Last week, Fitbit registered several documents with the US Patent and Trademark Office describing new features and tools that it might choose to develop into fully-fledged products. Most of these are things that we’d expect, including a technique for improving the accuracy of blood glucose readings, but one stands out as particularly ambitious.

Document US 20220046089 A1, filed on February 10, 2022, describes a full system that could transform the way youth sports events are run, and help parents stay on top of the action. Fitbit suggests that the system could be used to track ice hockey, floor hockey, inline hockey, baseball, soccer, football, rugby, lacrosse, and more. 

In its documentation, Fitbit notes that spectators often take notes of events during a game, and this information can be used to keep parents at home updated, and by coaches to inform future training plans. However, as it observes, this isn’t easy – particularly for fast-paced games.

Fitbit’s idea is to create a system that allows data to be gathered from multiple different sources, and shared to a wide network of fans. It could also be used to control the scoreboard at the game.

Know the score

The patent covers a system of “network-connected input devices”, plus a communication network. Spectators can enter data into a phone, laptop, smartwatch or other device, which is then sent to a remote server.

The server manages the event statistics, creates a play-by-play report for the game, and generates stats for each team and player. If there’s a conflict in the data sent to the server, it can send a request to clarify what happened through a system of upvotes.

Fitbit also suggests that “An event input device or server may generate media and send it to the communication system to be presented”. For example, this might be photos or video from a camera built into a spectator’s smart glasses highlighting the moment a goal was scored.

“For instance in a hockey game, an event can be a faceoff, a shot, a goal, a penalty, a stoppage of play, time change, period change, song being played in the arena, a video clip of the game, among other examples.”

Analysis: youth sport is an open goal

Registering a patent doesn’t mean that Fitbit will definitely develop a full system for managing youth sports, but this wouldn’t be the company’s first business service. It might be best known for its wearables, but the company also has a set of enterprise tools called Fitbit Health Solutions that lets researchers, doctors and other professionals use data from devices to help manage patients’ conditions, collect data for studies, and much more.

Moving into junior sports would be a big jump, but it makes sense – and there’s a lot of money to be made if Fitbit can get it right. The youth sports market is predicted to reach $77.6 billion by 2026, and if Fitbit (together with its parent company Google) can develop a system that takes the legwork out of managing games, it could be onto a real winner.