ECHODEPTHSPORTS
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United States

Athlete Readiness
for US Sport.

No federal privacy statute, fifty state answers, and a collective bargaining agreement on top. Athlete monitoring built for the jurisdiction that actually applies to your program.

In one paragraph

EchoDepth Sport in the United States

EchoDepth Sport is an athlete readiness and load monitoring platform used by professional and collegiate programs in the United States. Each athlete completes a short voluntary check-in, typically under 60 seconds, returning self-reported readiness and motivation alongside observable delivery signals — speech rate, response latency, positive language frequency and fatigue indicators — measured against that athlete's own rolling 30-day baseline. The United States has no comprehensive federal privacy statute covering this data, so compliance is determined state by state: Illinois BIPA governs biometric identifiers and carries a private right of action, Texas CUBI and Washington's My Health My Data Act impose their own consent regimes, and the CCPA as amended covers California employee data. Collegiate deployments additionally engage FERPA where output touches education records. Coaching and front-office staff see a team-level readiness index only, and output is contractually barred from informing roster, contract, draft or scholarship decisions.

Federal privacy statuteNone comprehensive — state law governs
Highest-risk statuteIllinois BIPA (740 ILCS 14) — private right of action
Also in scopeTexas CUBI, Washington MHMD, CCPA/CPRA
CollegiateFERPA where output touches education records
HIPAAGenerally not engaged — teams are not covered entities
Data residencyUnited States
Performance measurement

What gets measured

American performance staffs are already rich in measurement — force plates, GPS, catapult units, sleep trackers, an athlete management system tying it together. What is usually missing is a defensible read on how the athlete is coping that does not end up in a contract negotiation. The measurement below is designed to be useful to sports medicine and useless to the front office.

Athlete readiness measurement

A readiness index is produced from the athletes who chose to check in. Self-reported readiness and motivation are captured directly; speech rate, response latency, positive language frequency and fatigue indicators are derived from how the athlete answered. Every signal is compared to that athlete's own 30-day baseline, never to team-mates, which removes the ranking dynamic that makes players withhold.

Team readiness index reported 0–100 at group level
Per-athlete comparison against a rolling 30-day personal baseline
Completion shown as a simple count — no penalty for skipping
Typical check-in under 60 seconds

Load management and recovery monitoring

Fatigue indicators sit alongside GPS, RPE and force plate data, giving sports science and medical staff a fuller recovery picture across a long season. Fatigue is reported as a physical state, so a rising team-wide fatigue trend through a road trip or a compressed schedule is a load management question for the performance staff rather than a judgement about any individual.

Integrates with existing GPS, RPE and athlete management systems
Team-level fatigue trend across road trips and compressed schedules
Recovery status view for sports medicine and performance staff
Informs load management, never roster or rotation decisions

Return-to-play support

Where a program runs a graduated return-to-play protocol, the check-in provides a pre-injury behavioural baseline to compare against during reintegration. It supplements the team physician and athletic training staff and never replaces them — no return-to-play decision is made by the platform, and no output is presented as a diagnosis.

Pre-injury baseline captured as part of routine check-in
Supports team physician and athletic training judgement
No output presented as diagnosis or clearance
Visible to sports medicine staff only

Collegiate and student-athlete welfare

Collegiate programs carry an additional layer: a student-athlete is a student first, and output that becomes part of an education record engages FERPA. Deployments are scoped so that readiness output stays inside sports medicine, does not enter the student record, and cannot reach coaching staff at an individual level.

Scoped to stay outside FERPA education records
Routed to sports medicine and athlete welfare staff only
Never used for scholarship, roster or transfer portal decisions
Under-18 recruits require parental consent alongside assent
Regulatory framework

The law that applies

There is no single American answer. The United States has no comprehensive federal privacy statute covering athlete readiness data, so the binding rules come from state legislatures, from sector statutes like FERPA, and — for professional leagues — from the collective bargaining agreement, which frequently restricts this data more tightly than any state law does.

Illinois BIPA

740 ILCS 14, Biometric Information Privacy Act

What it requires
Written notice and written release before collecting a biometric identifier, a published retention and destruction schedule, and no sale or profit from biometric data. BIPA carries a private right of action with statutory damages per violation.
How EchoDepth meets it
Deployments in Illinois operate on written release captured per athlete before any collection, with a published retention and destruction schedule. Biometric data is never sold, licensed or otherwise monetised.

Texas CUBI

Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 503.001

What it requires
Informed consent before capturing a biometric identifier for a commercial purpose, reasonable care in storage, and destruction within a statutory period. Enforcement sits with the Texas Attorney General.
How EchoDepth meets it
Informed consent captured per athlete before collection, with destruction schedules configured to the statutory period and evidenced to the program.

Washington My Health My Data

RCW 19.373, My Health My Data Act

What it requires
Separate consent for collection and for sharing of consumer health data, a distinct published privacy notice, and a right to deletion. The Act carries a private right of action.
How EchoDepth meets it
Separate collection and sharing consents surfaced in-product for Washington deployments, with a standalone consumer health data notice and honoured deletion rights.

CCPA / CPRA

Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.100 et seq.

What it requires
California employee and applicant data is in scope. Notice at collection, purpose limitation, and rights of access, correction and deletion apply, with additional limits on sensitive personal information.
How EchoDepth meets it
Notice at collection issued to California athletes, processing limited to the disclosed welfare purpose, and access, correction and deletion requests honoured through the athlete's own portal.

FERPA

20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99

What it requires
Education records of students at institutions receiving federal funding may only be disclosed with consent or under a listed exception. Collegiate athlete data can fall inside this definition depending on how it is held.
How EchoDepth meets it
Collegiate deployments are scoped so readiness output stays inside sports medicine and does not enter the student education record, with the institution's registrar and counsel confirming the boundary before rollout.

Collective bargaining agreements

League-specific CBA provisions on player data

What it requires
Major American leagues restrict how athlete monitoring data may be used, and several expressly bar its use in contract negotiations. The CBA is frequently stricter than any applicable state statute.
How EchoDepth meets it
Deployment agreements are drafted to the CBA where one applies, and output is contractually barred from contract, roster and draft decisions regardless of whether the CBA requires it.

This page describes how the product is configured for the United States and is provided for information only. It is not legal advice. Clubs should take their own advice on their obligations before deployment. Last reviewed 2026-09-14.

Where we stop

Lines we do not cross in USA

American law would permit a good deal more than this. These limits are contractual rather than statutory in most states, and they exist because a readiness tool that can be subpoenaed into a contract dispute stops being a readiness tool the day the players work that out.

The athlete starts it

Nothing is captured passively — not from a facility camera, not from a media availability, not from anywhere else. If the athlete does not check in there is no data, no inference, and no record that they declined.

Never in a contract negotiation

Output cannot inform contract, roster, draft, waiver or scholarship decisions. That restriction is a term of the deployment agreement and is enforceable by the athlete, not only by the club or the players' association.

Signals, not emotion labels

The platform reports speech rate, response latency, positive language frequency and fatigue indicators against the athlete's own baseline. It does not tell a program that an athlete is anxious, and does not claim to detect concealed states.

Biometric data is never sold

Data is not sold, licensed, shared with sponsors or used to train models offered to anyone else. Under BIPA that is a statutory requirement in Illinois; it is applied as a company-wide rule in every state.

Competition context

Who else sets the standard

US deployments answer to a league or an athletic conference before they answer to a state legislature. Where a collective bargaining agreement or an NCAA rule is stricter than state law, the stricter standard is the one configured.

NFL

CBA provisions governing player tracking data and its exclusion from contract talks.

NBA

Wearables and player data restrictions, including bars on use in negotiations.

MLB

Joint agreement provisions on player health and biometric data handling.

MLS and NWSL

League player data standards alongside state privacy statutes.

NCAA

Student-athlete wellbeing standards, with FERPA applying to education records.

US Center for SafeSport

Athlete safety standards relevant to minors and amateur programs.

USA questions

Is there a federal law covering athlete monitoring data in the US?+
No comprehensive one. The United States has no general federal privacy statute covering athlete readiness or wellbeing data, so the binding obligations come from state law. Illinois BIPA is the most consequential because it carries a private right of action with statutory damages per violation. Texas CUBI, Washington's My Health My Data Act, and the CCPA as amended by the CPRA each impose their own consent and notice regimes. For professional programs, the collective bargaining agreement is frequently stricter than any of them.
Does HIPAA apply to a professional sports team?+
Generally not. HIPAA applies to covered entities — health plans, healthcare clearinghouses and healthcare providers who transmit health information electronically in connection with covered transactions. A professional sports team is usually not a covered entity, and athletic training staff employed directly by a club typically fall outside it too. This surprises people, because it means athlete health data can sit outside HIPAA entirely and be governed instead by state biometric and consumer health statutes. EchoDepth deployments are scoped to those state statutes rather than assuming HIPAA coverage that does not exist.
How does Illinois BIPA affect athlete monitoring?+
Significantly, because BIPA is the only major US biometric statute with a private right of action, and plaintiffs do not need to show actual harm. BIPA requires written notice and a written release before a biometric identifier is collected, a publicly available retention and destruction schedule, and a prohibition on selling or profiting from biometric data. EchoDepth deployments in Illinois operate on written release captured per athlete before any collection, publish the retention and destruction schedule, and never sell or license the data.
Can readiness data be used in contract negotiations?+
No. Output is contractually barred from informing contract, roster, draft, waiver or scholarship decisions, and that restriction is a term of the deployment agreement enforceable by the athlete rather than only by the club. Several major league collective bargaining agreements impose a comparable bar on the use of player monitoring data in negotiations. EchoDepth applies the restriction whether or not a CBA requires it, because a readiness tool that can surface in a contract dispute will stop being used honestly.
How does this work for NCAA student-athletes?+
With an additional layer. A student-athlete is a student first, and readiness output that becomes part of an education record engages FERPA, which limits disclosure without consent. Collegiate deployments are scoped so output stays inside sports medicine, does not enter the student education record, and never reaches coaching staff at an individual level. The institution's registrar and counsel confirm the boundary before rollout. Output is never used for scholarship, roster or transfer decisions, and recruits under 18 require parental consent alongside their own assent.
Where is US athlete data stored?+
In the United States. US data residency is the default for every US deployment, with no routine transfer outside the country. Where a program, a state statute or a conference requires a specific residency, retention or destruction arrangement, it is agreed in writing as part of the deployment agreement.

See EchoDepth
In USA.

Bespoke demonstration scoped to the United States obligations. We will also tell you what we would decline to deploy here.

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