Manchester City is, since the arrival of investment from the United Arab Emirates in 2008, one of the most advanced clubs in technological infrastructure worldwide. Something that has been made clear, normally, through the use of big data for decision-making or in the club’s own facilities. Now City has taken a step further by throwing a clever scarf for club fans to wear… and the sensors that it incorporates monitor its physiological changes as an emotional response during matches.
This launch is one of the fruits of the alliance that citizens they signed with Cisco almost three years ago. The objective, “to obtain a better understanding of the emotion” by those who wear it while the equipment is on the pitch.
Sensors worthy of the best smartwatch
Image: Manchester City.
The sensors that this scarf carries are, for the most part, those that we can find in any modern smart watch. From an accelerometer to a temperature sensor through an electrodermal activity sensor, a heart rate sensor or a PPG (photoplethysmography).
Working together they can understand what small biometric changes represent in the person wearing the scarf around their neck (the sensors are located right in the area of the neck), which once treated can be processed and understood as symptoms of certain emotions.
This is how the club itself explains it on its launch website, saying that they invited six City fans to wear it for an entire match to collect the biological signals from their body, and thus analyze how they were at all times.
So that? Well, from to “serve as a study in the passion we share” to “shape more personalized experiences in the future“. Or what is the same: to know what is the optimal time to offer specific products or experiences to a specific fan.
For now, this smart scarf will only be received by a group of previously selected club fans, according to Reuters, as a pilot program that may be extended at the beginning of next season. The New York City FC, a New York club that shares parent ownership with the English team, City Group, will also receive this same pilot.
In the coming weeks we hope that unknowns will be resolved around this scarf, such as what advantages the fan offers in exchange for giving the club the most elemental and intimate origin of their emotions (their own physiological changes), how the club, if the history of each scarf is linked to a specific user or not (hopefully yes, seeing the ultimate goal of this product) and what privacy guarantees does City offer to those who decide to wear it, as well as what response the fans offer to this launch, which completely changes the approach of the icon par excellence of the fans of a football team.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism