How the DTB is expanding its competition with Wingfield.

The Generali Performance Classification System has enjoyed great popularity in tennis Germany for many years. Around 400,000 players compete for points for their personal performance rating throughout the year. So far, LK relevant matches could only be played in team competitions or at official LK tournaments. Now, the DTB, together with the tennis technology company Wingfield, is offering players an additional opportunity to hunt for points.

Raik Packeiser, Vice-President at the DTB for Legal Affairs and Marketing adds: ”We want to promote digitalisation in tennis and at the DTB. The potential is great. The integration of the Wingfield system into competitive sport is an important step.”

The expansion of the existing competitive match offer is also intended as a reaction to the prevailing change in sports behaviour. The merging of leisure and professional worlds as well as the competition for players' time capacities with other leisure activities increase the need for more flexibility.

The Wingfield Court, which has already been installed in over 100 clubs across Germany, makes it easy to digitise tennis courts. The technology of the Hanover-based company can be understood as a smart tennis court that tracks all tennis-related activities during the match based on artificial intelligence (AI) and modern image processing technology. Similar to fitness trackers or running apps, players are provided with a variety of match statistics or automatically generated highlight videos in the corresponding app.

Within the partnership with the DTB, the Wingfield Court becomes kind of an independent control authority. The system analyses whether the matches are played according to existing rules and sends the results directly to the DTB and the LK rating system. The player’s personal profile with the current LK can exclusively be found in the Generali LK portrait on the mybigpoint platform. Conspicuous matches and results, on the other hand, will be checked individually by trained staff and, if necessary, will not be released for scoring.

The review process is based on a two-factor validation: During the match, Wingfield's artificial intelligence analyses various parameters, such as individual player behaviour or possible rule violations. If inconsistencies occur during the course of the match, conspicuous sequences will automatically be marked in the data set and subsequently checked using video evidence. If there are no concerns after the review process, the match result will be approved.

In order to use a Wingfield Court, players must first download the free Wingfield App from the App Store or Google Play Store and create a user account. This account can then be used to check in on the Wingfield Court. To enable LK matches with Wingfield, this account must be activated. For this purpose, the personal DTB player ID is added to the account. To process a Wingfield-LK match, a fee of 12.99 euros per player is charged. A current overview of all Wingfield courts in Germany can be found at www.wingfield.io/court-finder.