UFL Kickoff 2024: The New League’s Scott Harniman on What To Expect in the Inaugural Season

Expanded coach-to-player comms and Helmet Cams are among the highlights

UFL’s Scott Harniman: “The goal is transparency and giving a different experience to our fans and something that they haven’t been able to see before.”

Professional spring football kicks off this weekend, bringing together the best of the USFL and the XFL following their merger last year. The UFL has eight teams: Arlington Renegades, Birmingham Stallions, D.C. Defenders, Houston Roughnecks, Memphis Showboats, Michigan Panthers, San Antonio Brahmas, and St. Louis Battlehawks. UFL SVP, Technology, Scott Harniman, who has been involved with spring football since the XFL first gave it a go more than two decades ago, spoke with SVG about the upcoming season, the innovations to expect, and more.

How are you looking to use technology to differentiate the UFL from the XFL and USFL?
When we came out of the merger, we had a great chance to look at the different innovations that the XFL and the USFL had done over the last couple of years. We were able to pick and choose the best of both worlds. With spring football, we need to provide transparent access to the game for fans, whether they’re at the game or on the couch.

One of the big things we wanted to continue to experiment with is elevated coach-to-player communications. The NCAA is moving in that direction, and the NFL is looking. We made a choice to work with GSC, the current NFL partner, for coach-to-player communications this season. We will have eight players with helmet receivers because the coaches thought that was a good number to start with for Year 1.

The cool thing is, we put a lot of this into the coaches’ hands, and they can choose whether they want to [mike] six players on offense and two on defense or maybe even use all [the mics] on defense. Coaches will use it strategically, and it’s evident from the games that it has a direct impact on play.

Will coaches be able to talk to players during the play?
Yes, we don’t have a cutoff, so coaches are able to talk and coach up the players throughout the duration of the play. They could be talking to the defensive backs or the linebackers, giving them information on what the coaches are seeing as the play unfolds and the players line up in different formations.

What else are you doing for the teams?
We’re going to be working with DV Sport on sideline video [with iPads] as they do a tremendous job. The minute we provided access to video on the sidelines, the coaches immediately took to it; it’s not only the players who are gravitating toward it. Brad Campbell, VP of football technology, leads this program and does an amazing job of providing the staffs exactly what they need. In Year 1, we will have eight tablets on each sideline for coaches and players, and we’ll have one for medical.

The medical piece is important as well. We just finished a training session for our medical teams’ athletic trainers and spotters. The feedback from them is that being able to look at real-time video, the minute an injury happens, is impactful in helping diagnose and potentially treat that player. We will send all the camera feeds to DV Sport for the medical staff while the coaches get the Alt-22 and high end zone.

You mentioned transparent access. How do you get the buy-in from players and coaches?
I give a lot of credit to our CEO and President Russ Brandon and Darryl Johnston, UFL head of operations. They have assembled the correct coaches that allow this to work the way we want. They understand that the broadcast is listening, and they are sensitive to that. But the goal of this league is to allow players to unleash the power of football, allow them to potentially move on to that next level. It’s a mentality, it’s part of our culture, and it’s across everything.

On the broadcast side, I see you will be using Action Streamer for the Helmet Cams. What does it bring to the table?
We had really good discussions with Action Streamer. FOX has been a partner of them for the last two years; they will be part of all of our FOX broadcasts. The goal is exactly what we have been speaking about: transparency and giving a different experience to our fans and something that they haven’t been able to see before. Whether that’s following a quarterback in his progressions through that Helmet Cam or even a referee as we experiment with Hat Cams, fans can see the game the way they see it. We will crawl a little bit with that technology and find the best way to use the Helmet Cam. You will see it in our broadcast, and, when we find something that resonates and is able to captivate the audience, we’ll go back to it.

Tell us about the TrU Line from Bolt 6.
Bolt 6 is a great partner. We know them well, and they have that same DNA that we talked about earlier. They’re always up for experimentation and are our virtual-line partner for the UFL. We have six optical cameras installed in each of our venues in strategic locations. The cameras are trained through a machine-learning model that Bolt 6 developed: the instant an official gets the ball and spots it, the machine learning is triggered and draws a line to show exactly how far it is from the next line to gain.

We’re excited about this and have been talking with production about using it more. One of the outcomes of those conversations is that we have aligned on the ability to use this technology any time the ball is less than 30 in. from the line of gain or plus 6 in. ahead of the first down. Depending on the flow of the game, we have Bolt 6 ready to send the animation and measurement directly to broadcast to make the official call.

The cool thing for our fans is that they will be able to see this both on the broadcast and in the venue on the big board.

Let’s talk about the app. It is sort of nine apps in one because each team has its own section in addition to the overall league app.
It’s all about being scrappy. We are a startup and have a great partner, Yinzcam, which can build this container app. The goal was to create a league app that provides all the information you need at the league level but also allows you to take on a [particular fan] persona by building a profile. We have automations built in on the digital side so that, for example, when we have curated stories for Birmingham in our YouTube library, they will automatically be tagged and built into that team-app experience. Whenever we have news stories, highlights, photo galleries that are tailored to fans, we use tagging on the digital side, whether that’s through our web partner Next League or through YouTube.

Our fans need our app because we are a completely digital ticketing company and our mobile wallet exists in the app. [Keeping] fans in the app with unique experiences at both the league and team level was the basis for building it the way we did. Leslie Basler, senior director, digital technology, is tremendous at working with creatives, digital, and folks on the content and media side and pulled this all together for us.