Premier League monitoring ball chip technology with view for potential future use

The Premier League has observed and evaluated ball chip technology in competitive matches as the league considers its possible future use.

Connected Ball technology uses a sensor embedded inside the ball to identify the precise moment it is touched, providing officials with additional data for situations such as on offsides, handballs, deflections and double touches.

Sources briefed on the matter told The Athletic that Premier League representatives observed the technology at the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup in London in January and at the 2025 Wings Cup youth tournament at RB Leipzig, where it was used with Puma balls. The system has not yet been trialled during a Premier League fixture.

Spain’s La Liga will become the first national professional football competition to deploy Connected Ball technology across every match this season. La Liga’s system uses radio-frequency sensors developed by German technology company KINEXON Sports and integrated into Puma match balls, with data transmitted to around 12 antennas installed at each stadium.

Sources added that there are no immediate plans for the introduction of Connected Ball technology in the Premier League, where the existing semi-automated offside system can determine when the ball is played without an internal sensor, but the league will continue to monitor its use elsewhere.

The Premier League’s existing system relies on optical tracking, using up to 30 cameras around each stadium to follow the ball and thousands of data points on every player before suggesting a kick point and automatically generating offside lines for VAR.

When the system was introduced in April 2025, the Premier League said a sensor inside the ball was not required because its optical tracking could determine when the ball had been played. A chip inside the ball would provide a separate measurement of that moment of contact.

Connected Ball technology has previously been used with Adidas balls at major international tournaments including the 2022 and 2026 men’s World Cups, the 2023 Women’s World Cup, Euro 2024, Women’s Euro 2025 and the 2025 Club World Cup.

The technology was seen being utilised at this summer’s World Cup, including to disallow a late Croatia equaliser in their last-32 loss to Portugal by detecting that the ball had flicked off striker Igor Matanovic in the build up, before landing to midfielder Mario Pasalic in an offside position.

Puma has supplied Premier League match balls since the start of the 2025-26 season, taking over from Nike, and is also La Liga’s official ball supplier.