The Wall Street Journal - 12.03.2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Thursday, March 12, 2020 |R9

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: AQUA LUNG; RESEARCH LAB OF ELECTRONICS/MIT; IUC BERKELEY; LLUSTRATION BY JON KRAUSE

M

inutes before the ball drops at an

NBA game, you get a tip from a

team insider that the star power

forward is playing with a fractured wrist. You

grab your phone and wager $1,000 that the

injured player’s team loses.

Is that insider trading?

The multibillion-dollar sports-betting in-

dustry is getting bigger, fast—and bursting

with legal questions.

It was just two years ago that the U.S. Su-

preme Court lifted the lid on the industry

and ruled that states had the power to au-

thorize betting on sports. Legalization has

spread rapidly since then. Fifteen states al-

ready have regulated sports betting, most of

which allow some form of mobile betting.

About half a dozen states are expected to

roll out sports betting this year.

The explosive growth isn’t just in the vol-

ume and value of the wagers but in the data

used to place them.

Motion-tracking systems and wearable

sensors make it possible to monitor games

and athletes at a granular level—instanta-

neously. Major League Baseball pitchers wear

a compression sleeve on their throwing arms

that collects biomechanical data to measure

elbow stress. Baseball players also wear

wristbands that capture their sleep cycles,

heart rates and temperatures, as do football

players.

Teams and coaches are using the data for

training and practice purposes—for now. As

the stakes have grown, the questions of who

owns the data, who has access to it and the

government’s role in regulating it are largely

unanswered.

Sportsbooks, the physical and online gam-

bling operations that accept wagers and col-

BYJACOBGERSHMAN

lect commissions, are jockeying with profes-

sional leagues and players for control of the

information. Many in the industry predict

confrontations over issues ranging from

property rights to privacy and antitrust en-

forcement. Some legal experts say a level of

federal oversight of the industry is inevitable.

For now, the industry is governed by a

patchwork of statutes with varying security

provisions and mandates. The coming years

could settle who has the right to sell or li-

cense lucrative troves of real-time data col-

lected at stadiums and arenas, and used to

generate odds. That data is the lifeblood of

in-game wagers placed during games.

The MLB, NBA and NFL have lobbied for

state provisions requiring sportsbooks to

generate odds and settle outcomes using “of-

ficial data” transmitted from licensed, league-

approved distributors. The leagues argue that

only they can deliver reliable and consistent

data to the betting industry.

Some legal scholars, though, worry about

the leagues’ possessing so much market con-

trol. Preventing competitors from gathering

and selling the data themselves could raise

prices and potentially violate antitrust laws,

they say. Restraints on data collection could

also give rise to First Amendment claims.

Brian Socolow, a New York sports-industry

lawyer, sees a cybersecurity risk in putting all

the eggs in one basket. “There’s no reason

why a professional sports league would be

immune from a data breach,” he says.

Information about an athlete’s vertical

jump height, running speed, heart rate and

sleep patterns could be valuable for sports-

books. Still, biometric-based betting is in its

infancy. Major casinos are not yet buying bio-

metric data.

Both MLB and the NBA ban commercial

use of players’ biometric data. The NFL’s 2011

collective bargaining agreement didn’t specif-

ically ban it. Separately, a 2017 deal between

the NFL players union and Whoop Inc., a

Boston-based fitness-tracking company, sup-

plied athletes with wrist-strap devices that

track physical strain, recovery and sleep pat-

terns. The deal allowed players to sell their

Whoop data.

Some of the questions involving privacy,

security, access and ownership rights could

be sorted out in negotiations between own-

ers and players’ unions. But it might take liti-

gation to settle exactly who can collect, buy

and sell that personal information. Federal

and state health-data privacy laws could

muddy the picture even more.

Sports unions have balked at the idea of

such data becoming a bargaining chip. “Under

no circumstances should a player’s heart

rate, sweat rate, DNA, bone density, muscle

density, sleep fitness be a subject of collec-

tive bargaining,” National Basketball Players

Association attorney David Foster told Mas-

sachusetts lawmakers at a hearing in May.

He said no player’s health data should be

shared without explicit authorization from

his bargaining representatives.

Mike Ouellet, a top official with the Na-

tional Hockey League union, told lawmakers

at the hearing that many players find the

idea of betting with biometric data to be

morally offensive.

Illinois passed a sports-betting law last

year that assumes a potential market for the

wearable data. The state’s statute bans

sportsbooks from using biometric informa-

tion without getting written authorization

from the athlete’s players’ association.

The Supreme Court’s ruling didn’t prevent

the federal government from regulating the

industry, but Washington so far is moving

with caution. Federal regulation of the indus-

try is limited. There is no Securities and Ex-

change Commission for sports betting or in-

sider-betting law.

It might take a major game-fixing scandal

to force the regulation of sports betting.

“Whether it’s sports betting or insider trad-

ing,” says Mr. Socolow, “they raise the same

issues about having a level playing field.”

SPORTS BETTING

The

Gamble on

Biometrics

Researchers are developing new materials

to make gear like helmets and shoes better

at preventing injuries.

Robert Knight and Ram Gurumoorthy,

founders of the startup BrainGuard, designed

a helmet for cyclists and football players

that they say offers extra protection against

rotational forces, or impacts that quickly

twist the head. The two-layered design has

an outer shell that wobbles when hit, like a

bobblehead,pictured at right. It is connected

to an interior shell with rubber-band-like ma-

terials that absorb and diminish force before

it reaches the brain. The helmet reduced im-

pact force by 25% to 45% when compared

with the top four current National Football

League helmets, according to their impact

tests. BrainGuard says it is waiting to receive

a certification that would allow high-school

and college teams to use the helmet.

Riddell, a football equipment maker, and

Carbon Inc. are 3D-printing custom inner

paddings for helmets.

Out-of-this-world innovations are also

Less intrusive, AI-enabled sensors could

soon collect even more sports- and health-

related data from the human body than

current wearables.

A Boston-based company called

Figur8 has developed single-use

sensors that stick to an ath-

lete’s skin or clothing. They

can quantify the angles of

joints and timing and inten-

sity of muscle activation in

response to movements,

and then translate that data

to an app for analysis. The aim

is to help athletes move more

efficiently, recover faster and train

smarter. The sensors are currently avail-

able for use by trainers and therapists.

Eventually, the technology could help predict

injuries and early signs of potential diseases.

Other sensors, like those made by Nix,

measure hydration levels during training.

The stickers have a digital interface that,

with the help of an algorithm, informs ath-

letes when, what and how much to drink

F

ootball helmets that

wobble upon im-

pact, protecting the

player’s head. Spacecraft-

inspired material that

could make sneakers

lighter and runners faster.

Sensor stickers that could

alert athletes to potential

diseases. At labs across

the country, researchers

are hard at work develop-

ing sports apparel and

equipment to improve

athletic performance and

prevent injuries.

“We’ll see more perfor-

mance gear that pas-

sively adapts to environ-

mental conditions while

keeping people comfort-

able,” says Anette “Peko”

Hosoi, co-founder of the

Massachusetts Institute

of Technology Sports Lab,

a sports engineering pro-

gram created to improve

athletic performance and

safety through science.

“People thinking cre-

atively in this space al-

ways figure out how to

go around the rules.”

Here, a look at the

technology that may one

day show up at a track,

field or pool near you.

—Katie Camero

cially placed, rigid seams, has

textured panels that break wa-

ter tension, similar to the effect

of dimples on a golf ball. The

new suit saw a 1% glide im-

provement compared with fab-

rics in current suits, which mat-

ters in a sport that measures

time differences in hundredths

of a second, the designers say.

Customized fabrics can also

protect athletes from overheat-

ing. MIT’s Jeffrey Grossman,

Zhengmao Lu and Nicola Ferra-

lis developed a material—origi-

nally designed for chocolate

packaging—that is capable of

coolingcontentsupto5de-

grees Celsius for weeks at a

time. So far, they have studied

its application only for packag-

ing, but they believe that one

day it could be embedded in

clothing fibers to regulate the

body temperatures of athletes,

firefighters and soldiers, espe-

cially when outdoors.

The secret is in the atomic

structure and layering of three

types of materials that can col-

lect water from the air, store it

and then use controlled evapo-

ration to release heat when the

fabric detects excess warmth

from the body. The passive cool-

ing technology “makes the ma-

terial itself intelligent,” says Dr.

Grossman, a materials scientist.

The New Track Suit

for optimal performance based on biomark-

ersinsweat.

Athletes have been slow to adopt sen-

sors because of their bulkiness. Researchers

are working to embed them in fabric.

“Fabrics are the new AI frontier,” says

Yoel Fink, former director of MIT’s Re-

search Lab of Electronics and

founder of Advanced Functional

Fabrics of America, who has

designed a “fabric com-

puter.”

It starts as a 10-inch rod

made of glass or plastic,

filled with microscopic com-

puter chips, microphones

and batteries,pictured at

left. The rod is then heated in a

special furnace and stretched to

make a fiber slightly thicker than a

strand of hair. Today, the technology is con-

fined to the lab, but Dr. Fink hopes to pro-

duce the fibers in mass quantities. Woven

together, the fibers would create clothing

capable of storing energy, sensing tempera-

ture and measuring sweat salinity and

heart rate. AI would then assess this data,

giving athletes details about their activity.

Adding Innovation

to Injury

coming to shoes—literally. Julian Rimoli, an

associate professor of aerospace engineer-

ing at the Georgia Institute of Technology,

has developed a three-dimensional lattice

material that could replace traditional,

heavier foams in the soles of shoes, based

on his studies of spacecraft.

Dr. Rimoli found that the connecting

bars and cables of a planetary lander re-

covered their form after impact. A lattice

material with the same structure is 10

times more efficient at absorbing energy

compared with today’s soles, potentially

helping athletes run more efficiently while

lowering risks of knee and ankle injuries..

The personalization of clothing

and technology, down to atomic

structure, is helping enhance

athletes’ performance.

Swimmers need tight clothing

to reduce friction in the water,

but too much compression over

time can cause a buildup of lac-

tic acid that makes muscles

burn with fatigue. Olympic

champion Michael Phelps and

his coach Bob Bowman teamed

up with Aqua Lung, a California

aquatic-sports equipment com-

pany, to design highly custom-

ized swimsuits. They aim to do

a better job than current com-

pression wear to preserve mus-

cle energy and reduce weight

and drag for faster swims. The

suits,pictured at left, will be

used by about a dozen athletes

at the Tokyo Olympics in July.

The designers developed an

adaptive compression fabric

technology for the suit with

several panels that stretch in

three dimensions, depending on

the athlete and the body part.

Hip, glute and stomach areas

get tighter compression to keep

the body as parallel to the wa-

ter’s surface as possible. The

fabric, held together with spe-

Performance

Enhancing Duds

THE FUTURE OF EVERYTHING |SPORTS

IN THE LAB: ATHLETIC GEAR

Olympian Michael Phelps helped design a suit meant to make swimmers faster.