For the new season there will be a new provider for video evidence in the Bundesliga and the 2nd Bundesliga: The company Vieww will replace Hawk-Eye.
The 2nd Bundesliga will start the new season next weekend (15th-17th July 2022), the Bundesliga will follow three weeks later (5th-7th August 2022). Hawk-Eye had provided the technology since the video assistant (VAR) was introduced in the Bundesliga in 2017. In 2019, the VAR was introduced in the 2nd Bundesliga and a cooperation with the German Football League (DFL) was agreed until 2022. This is now expiring.
Vieww partly owned by the DFL – and by Simon Rolfes
In the future, the company Vieww will provide the framework for the video assistant in the “Kölner Keller” and the goal-line technology. In contrast to Hawk-Eye, Vieww is partly owned by the DFL. Sporttec Solutions, a joint venture between the technology company Deltatre and the DFL, has acquired a majority stake in Vieww. The contract between Sporttec Solutions and the newly founded DFB Schiri GmbH will initially run for five years until 2027.
According to the DFB, Simon Rolfes, sports director of Bundesliga club Bayer 04 Leverkusen, is also involved in Vieww. The DFB announced in Marchthat Rolfes as a minority shareholder “No operative influence in the company” have. “According to contractual regulations, such a role is also excluded in the future. The matter was subjected to an external audit by an independent auditing institute and contractually secured in coordination with the DFL.”
New technology also in the DFB Cup
In addition to the Bundesliga and the 2nd Bundesliga, the new technology is also to be used in the DFL Supercup, in the relegation games to the Bundesliga and the 2nd Bundesliga and, if necessary, in DFB games – i.e. above all the men’s DFB Cup from the round of 16 .
Like Hawk-Eye, Vieww is one of five systems certified by FIFA for the video assistant, for goal-line technology and for the creation of virtual offside lines. The latter should not be confused with the semi-automatic offside detection that FIFA will use at the World Cup in Qatar.
Jochen Drees, Head of Technology and Innovation at DFB Schiri GmbH, said according to the DFB announcement: “We have new opportunities and potential for optimization.” When the takeover was announced in March, Vieww advertised, among other things, that “all cameras 200 HD images per second for analysis and review of critical goal area scenes” deliver.
Vieww used to be GoalControl
The company Vieww comes from Aachen and was formerly called GoalControl. GoalControl supplied the goal-line technology at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, which was used there for the first time by FIFA. The French league ended a deal with GoalControl in 2018 after several tech malfunctions.
On the first matchday of the 2017/18 season, the video assistant was introduced in the Bundesliga “massive technical problems of the service provider Hawk-Eye”, as the DFL announced at the time. The technology was temporarily or not at all available for some games. In the most recent season, 2021/22, there was a malfunction in the goal-line technology, which indicated a goal in the Mainz 05 game against Arminia Bielefeld, even though the ball was not in it.