Aditya ChaudhuriThe National Basketball Association (NBA) has signed a long-term deal with sports tech company Fastbreak.ai, which sees NBA Equity become a seed-round investor in the company.
As per the deal, Fastbreak.ai’s cutting-edge software-as-a-service (SAAS) solutions will be employed for the scheduling processes of the NBA, the WNBA, the G League, and the NBA2K League.
Evan Wasch, Executive Vice President — Basketball Strategy & Analytics, NBA, commented:
“The NBA is excited to collaborate with Fastbreak.ai to integrate state-of-the-art technology solutions into one of sport’s most complex processes – the league schedule. The partnership reflects our belief in the company and our shared commitment to fostering innovation.“
John Stewart, CEO, Fastbreak.ai, said:
“This partnership with the NBA marks a significant step forward in applying advanced technologies to sports scheduling. We are committed to not just redefining the scheduling experience but also simplifying and democratising the scheduling process. The NBA has always been a leader in innovative technology use, and we are pleased they selected Fastbreak to bring our AI-driven, enterprise innovation to their scheduling.“
Dr Chris Groer, Chief Product Officer, Fastbreak.ai, added:
“Fastbreak.ai’s platform combines decades of experience in scheduling optimization with a powerful user interface to analyse everything from travel to game density to television viewership. The NBA schedule is one of the most complex scheduling puzzles in the world as the league must balance travel, home/away patterns, and competitive fairness across many metrics while also accounting for dynamically changing venue availability and now a new In-Season Tournament.
“The Fastbreak system allows the user to change and optimise the schedule in near real time, and our schedule visualisation tool allows the user to modify and repair the schedule based on nearly any kind of constraint that arises. We are thrilled with our NBA partnership and look forward to bringing our platform to organisations of all sizes, from other professional leagues all the way down to the smallest youth and recreational leagues.“
