Samsung's ShotControl AI Tool Gives Dutch 3x3 Basketball Team an Olympic Edge

As part of Samsung Benelux’s partnership with the Dutch Olympic team, Samsung and Cheil WW Benelux have launched an innovative AI performance tool to give the Dutch national men’s 3x3 basketball team an edge.

New to the Olympics, 3x3 is the fastest form of basketball. It is a 10-minute game with three players aside, half a court, one hoop, no timeout, and no court-side coach. Player fatigue causes shot accuracy to plummet in the last 90 seconds of the game, so every advantage counts. 

To provide the Dutch Olympics team with an edge, Cheil conceived and developed ShotControl, an AI-powered sports analytics tool that provides the 3x3 basketball players with detailed information about their performance. The tool enables coaches and players to understand from which precise spot on the court they have the greatest accuracy as fatigue sets in during a match.

ShotControl required multiple Samsung Galaxy devices to be Installed in the Dutch National basketball training facilities to capture images and track and map every player’s shot accuracy over multiple weeks of training. Using AI, the ShotControl application builds multiple data sets from the tracking and mapping before converting the data into a dynamic heat map to give players an accurate assessment of who has the best shot accuracy from what court position in the final 90 seconds.

ShotControl demonstrates how Samsung Galaxy technology can open up new possibilities. It follows previous successful innovations from Samsung and Cheil Benelux for the Dutch Olympic team, including SmartSuit, which helped the Dutch short-course speed skating team to x4 medals at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games, and the FastFrame analytics tool, which helped Neik Kimminn achieve Gold in Tokyo for the Dutch men’s national BMX team.

Gerben van Walt Meijer, marketing manager mobile eXperiences at Samsung (SEBN), said, “Samsung has a long history with the Olympic Games. It's great to see that we can once again crown our partnership with a third technological development. After Smartsuit and FastFrame, both of which were very successful at the Olympics, we hope to prove once again that innovation can make things possible that seem impossible; in Paris but also important 3x3 tournaments afterwards - such as the European Championship and the World Championship."

Tim van der Sijde, managing director, Cheil Benelux, said, "In developing ShotControl, we wanted to truly help 3x3 basketball and simultaneously showcase Samsung's innovative strength. The innovation had to be developed in such a way that it didn't hinder the players and was intuitive enough for them to use themselves. Technology that continues to provide insights in the long term. Not a one-off. It became a project we worked on for years, bringing together various expertise within our agency. At Cheil, we love to make technology as tangible as possible, and where is that more the case than at the highest level in the Olympic arena?!"

Malcolm Poynton, global chief creative officer, Cheil Worldwide, said, “Cheil continues to lead the industry in mobile innovation and AI, with Cheil Benelux once again designing a ground-breaking solution to improve the performance of Olympic athletes. Pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, the intelligence of Samsung ShotControl creates an entirely new kind of digital training partner that’s already changing the game.”