IBM has been piloting a real-time analytics tool that tracks players' movement, stamina, distance covered and style of play during the 125th Wimbledon championship, with the aim of having it up and running next year.

V3.co.uk was invited to the IBM Bunker at Wimbledon to get a sneak preview of the SecondSight system being trialled on Court 18.

The system uses technology orignally developed for military use, and works by capturing player data via multiple cameras located behind the umpire. This information is analysed using IBM's algorithms and rendered to display a real-time 3D graphic.

"We've been able to collect statistics about individual points up till now, and have extended this to collect statistics about player fitness," Alan Flack, IBM's Wimbledon client and programme executive, told V3.co.uk.

"We can track speed, stamina and distance covered over the course of a match. It is also possible to map player movement to see their style of play and to see who is tiring, for example."

The SecondSight system is pending approval from Wimbledon officials, and if accepted is likely to be available on the official web site for next year's tournament. Flack also noted that the dashboard could be used as a broadcast overlay so that viewers can see statistics during matches.

The main screen simulates point-by-point action and shows stats including player speed and distance covered.

All player movement is mapped, the red areas indicating the most used part of the court.

IBM also demonstrated its PointStream service, which was launched in time for this year's tournament. The information graphic is available on the official Wimbledon web site, which had over five million unique visitors and over 180 million page views in the first five days of the tournament.

PointStream uses predictive analytics to generate three key things that a player has to do to win a match, and monitors how well these are being fulfilled during the match, explained Elizabeth Hammer, IBM project manager for Wimbledon.

"We are using this for tennis, but there is no reason that the analytics technology cannot be used to analyse data in the financial or biomedical industries where they have a wealth of data," she said.

The 'three keys' are updated throughout the match, so viewers have an idea of who has the upper hand.