Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots fans will witness more than just a Super Bowl LX matchup this Sunday; they’ll see the culmination of a decade’s worth of data-driven insights transforming the game. The National Football League’s Next Gen Stats system, powered by Amazon Web Services, is wrapping up its tenth season, forever changing how the sport is played, coached, and broadcast.
Data Revolution on the Gridiron
Next Gen Stats have become integral to football, providing granular data previously unavailable to coaches and viewers.
Launched in 2015, Next Gen Stats initially utilized RFID chips embedded in player shoulder pads and the football itself. This allowed the league to capture player location data multiple times per second using sensors strategically placed throughout stadiums. “Next Gen Stats is part of the vernacular now,” says Julie Souza, AWS’s global head of sports.
From Tracking to Prediction
The system has evolved significantly. The addition of 4K cameras now enables the capture of precise positional data for individual body parts – shoulders, elbows, knees, and hands – generating 29 data points per player 60 times per second. This raw data is processed by AWS servers within the stadium in approximately 700 milliseconds, then transmitted to the cloud for analysis by machine learning models in under 100 milliseconds. The result? Analytics delivered to broadcasters in roughly one second, often faster than the standard broadcast delay.
Broadcasters now have access to dashboards displaying key statistics, alongside artificial intelligence systems capable of answering natural-language questions about both current and historical data. Souza explains that announcers can ask questions like, “When was the last time this particular play happened, or that you know, this metric was achieved?”
The impact extends beyond the broadcast booth. Next Gen Stats increasingly informs player coaching, off-field training regimens, and even rule changes aimed at enhancing player safety. For example, AWS assisted the NFL in simulating thousands of football seasons to refine the Dynamic Kickoff rule, introduced in the 2025 season. The simulations accurately predicted the rule’s success in boosting kickoff returns while simultaneously reducing concussion rates. “What’s amazing about that is everything that we had modeled for them is what has panned out from the results,” Souza says. (AWS declined to comment on the financial details of the NFL partnership.)
What is the typical delay for analytics to reach broadcasters using Next Gen Stats? Approximately one second, which is often faster than the NFL’s standard broadcast delay.
Next Gen Stats technology utilizes RFID chips and 4K cameras to track player movements and provide detailed analytics.
