NHL All-Star Weekend 2015: Players to Be Equipped With GoPro
The NHL plans to allow GoPro to strap some of their wearable cameras to players during the All Star Skills Challenge Jan. 24.
The cameras will allow GoPro to live broadcast what the players are seeing while taking part in the Skills Challenge. If successful, the league may allow GoPro to strap the cameras to the players during the All-Star Game the following day.
GoPro has been trying to find a way to broadcast its footage captured from its wearable cameras live, and with a recent partnership with Vislink that is now possible.
GoPro is presented with a challenge while they explore this type of sportcasting: the size of their cameras. They are not quite small enough to be worn by a player for a whole game without getting bothersome or in the way.
The NHL also would have to agree to let this unique way of broadcasting hockey happen. Of course, players have been "mic'd" up in football games for years now, but that is not the same as wearing a camera on their heads.
Last year, GoPro started testing the cameras on the players. It looks like the NHL wants to use the cameras to help teach players skills on stickhandling, skating and being a goalie.
GoPro probably will be allowed to install cameras on the boards and in the nets but that is not as exciting as the first-person experience of having them strapped to the actual players.
The NHL has tried to make the game more exciting in the past, eliminating two line passes and shrinking the goalie's equipment are two examples. Fox Sports tried to make the game even easier to watch on TV by utilizing an expensive laser puck.
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