Ball Tracking AI

Follow the ball or puck in every frame, measure its path and speed, and turn every shot, pass, and putt into data, from broadcast, venue, or phone video.

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A basketball player shoots a ball, with digital labels showing its trajectory (arc, speed) and a "shot-make" indication.

Ball Tracking AI for the Toughest Fast, Small, and Hidden Balls

  • Deploy Anywhere, Run Everywhere

    Run ball tracking on broadcast feeds, fixed venue cameras, and phone video, on device in your app, on the edge at the venue, in the cloud, or via API.

  • One Platform, Full Adoption

    Tools every sports team can adopt, from analysts and coaches to venue operators and the product teams building sports apps, no separate ML team required.

  • Secure, Compliant, and Audit-Ready

    Data stays safe with SOC 2 Type II compliance, encrypted data, HIPAA compliance, and an uptime SLA, with an annotated frame behind every shot, pass, and stat.

  • Ball & Puck Detection
  • Trajectory & Ball Speed
  • Shot Make & Miss
  • Possession & Pass Events
  • Bounce & Landing Points
  • Golf Ball & Putt Tracking
“RF-DETR performs better during scrums and face-offs where you have players on top of each other. It even detects players reliably through netting and occlusion, so no matter what footage you give us, we know where they are on the ice.”

Tanner Manett

Co-Founder and CTO, Statsyuk

Read the full story

Talk to a Vision AI engineer who's shipped in sports.

Bring us your toughest ball tracking problem and we'll map a working solution.

Ask us about:

  • Solution architecture that fits your sport, cameras, and app or broadcast pipeline
  • A live demo on your own game, practice, or phone footage
  • Deployment options: on device, edge, cloud, or VPC
  • ROI modeling against manual tagging hours, hardware tracking costs, and time to highlights

Over 80,000 organizations build with Roboflow.

  • Rivian
  • Pella
  • Chobani
  • USG Corporation
  • BNSF Railway
  • American Woodmark
Start where you are

Vision AI is transforming businesses

Customers across the board are solving complex challenges and driving meaningful impact.

  • Automotive customer

    $10 million

    Saved by automatically detecting defects on the production line

  • Logistics & freight company

    90%

    Less time spent manually tracking shipping inventory

  • Building materials supplier

    60%

    Lower customer return rate with improved product quality

Track Every Ball, from the First Touch to the Final Whistle

Add automated ball tracking to every game, practice, and round with Roboflow vision AI, the ball layer of a full sports analytics stack. Built for leagues, broadcasters, venues, and sports app teams, where the ball is a few pixels wide, moves faster than anything else in the frame, and disappears behind players at the moment that matters most.

Find the ball:

  • Detect basketballs, soccer balls, hockey pucks, golf balls, tennis balls, and more, with a model trained on footage from your own cameras and venues.
  • Split wide frames into overlapping tiles to catch a small, fast ball far from the camera, then merge the results back onto the full frame.
  • Filter out look-alikes such as heads, shoes, and spare balls on the sideline, so the tracker follows the one ball in play.

Measure the flight:

  • Follow the ball frame to frame to build its trajectory, and draw trails and shot paths on the video for replays and coaching.
  • Map the ball onto the court, pitch, rink, or green with field keypoint calibration, so speed, distance, and landing points come out in real units.
  • Track golf balls and putts from launch or stroke to the hole, for practice ranges, putting venues, and coaching apps.

Turn it into stats:

  • Log shots, makes, and misses, and pair the ball with player tracking to credit passes, possessions, and touches to the right player.
  • Cut highlight reels automatically around goals, shots, and big plays, and steer automated cameras to follow the ball.
  • Run compact models on the phone for live shot feedback in your app, and larger models in the cloud for full-game breakdowns.

Bring intelligence to every game today. Know where the ball went, how fast it got there, and who sent it, on every play.

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Frequently asked questions

What is ball tracking with Vision AI?

Ball tracking with Vision AI runs a trained computer vision model (opens in a new tab) on game video to find the ball or puck in every frame, links those detections into a trajectory, and turns the path into stats such as speed, shots, passes, and landing points.

Which sports and cameras does it work with?

Basketball, soccer, hockey, golf, tennis, pickleball, volleyball, and more, from broadcast feeds, fixed venue cameras, and phone video. Models are trained on footage from your own cameras, so they learn your ball, lighting, and angles.

How does it track a ball that is small, fast, or hidden behind players?

Tiled inference finds a ball that is only a few pixels wide, and a tracker keeps the ball's recent path so it stays locked on the ball in play, rejects look-alikes, and picks the ball back up as soon as it reappears.

Can it run inside our app or broadcast pipeline?

Yes. Models run on device in mobile apps, on edge hardware at the venue, or in the cloud, and Roboflow sends ball positions, events, and annotated frames over a REST API (opens in a new tab) or webhooks to your stats, graphics, and highlight systems.

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