Premier League ‘to monitor’ ball chip technology amid La Liga rollout

The Premier League has observed and assessed Connected Ball technology as it considers whether to adopt it in future.

According to The Athletic, league staff saw it at January’s FIFA Women’s Champions Cup in London and at the 2025 Wings Cup in Leipzig, where Puma balls were used. It has not been trialled in a Premier League match.

The system places a sensor inside the ball to pinpoint the exact moment of contact, giving officials extra data for offsides, handballs, deflections and double touches.

La Liga will be the first national professional competition to run it across every game this season, using KINEXON radio frequency sensors in Puma balls and around 12 antennas per stadium.

The Premier League already uses a semi-automated offside system based on optical tracking, with up to 30 cameras and thousands of player data points to propose a kick point and generate offside lines for VAR.

When that setup launched in April 2025, the league said an in-ball sensor was unnecessary because optical tracking could determine when the ball was played, although a chip would offer a separate measurement.

Connected Ball has featured at the men’s World Cups in 2022 and 2026. At this summer’s tournament it helped rule out a late Croatia equaliser against Portugal after detecting a touch off Igor Matanovic before the ball reached Mario Pasalic, who was offside.

Puma has supplied Premier League match balls since the start of 2025-26 and is also La Liga’s official ball partner.

Source: NY Times

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