MLB’s Seattle Mariners are Latest Sports Team to Use Biometric Oura Ring

The Seattle Mariners have announced a partnership with smart ring maker Oura Health to use the biometric sensor-laden Oura ring for the team’s players and staff.

Using a number of biometric sensors, the Oura ring is able to track a number of metrics that can offer personalized and actionable insights on sleep and overall health by measuring various physiological signals such as temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, and heart rate variability.

The data collected is aggregated into a Sleep Score that is presented every morning in the Oura app, as well as a Readiness Score, which can be used to identify how an individual’s body is recovering and provide guidance for the following day’s activities, both valuable tools for a professional sports organization.

“We are thrilled the Seattle Mariners have chosen Oura to help take their training and conditioning programs to the next level,” said Harpreet Singh Rai, Oura CEO. “Proper recovery is critical to professional athletes since it directly impacts their ability to train and perform at their best. The Oura Ring measures changes in a person’s biometric data with unmatched precision, empowering team members to better monitor their health and make more informed decisions to achieve performance goals.”

The Mariners are the latest in a growing list of professional sports organizations to adopt the Oura ring as a tool for staying healthy. In June the National Basketball Association revealed it would make the Oura ring optional for players, staff and personnel to use as a tool to track potential COVID-19 symptoms as the league looked to restart the paused 2019/2020 season in a ‘bubble’ in Florida.

Similarly, the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) also turned to the biometric smart ring as a means of tracking the vitals of players and personnel on tour, with the aim of predicting COVID-19 days before an individual becomes symptomatic.

In the Mariners’ case, no mention was made of using the ring for COVID-19-related purposes, with the focus instead placed on the device’s sleep-tracking functions.

“We believe that the restorative value of sleep is critical to a championship model,” said Jerry Dipoto, Executive VP & General Manager, Seattle Mariners. “As such, the opportunity for us to partner with Oura is an exciting step in our ongoing pursuit of high performance, both on the field and off.”

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September 29, 2020 – by Tony Bitzionis