New digital fan experience elements will be introduced at this year’s Wimbledon Championships according to an announcement from American tech corporation IBM and the All England Lawn Tennis Club.
For all video highlights packages during Wimbledon, a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) element will provide tennis commentary using IBM’s generative AI technology called “watsonx”.
The “IBM AI Draw Analysis” function will offer a new statistic to indicate how favourable each player’s path to the final would be, which is a first in tennis.
The leaderboard for the IBM Power Index, IBM Match Insights, and personalised highlights reels and recommendations are also included utilising the IBM Watson AI technology on the IBM Cloud.
The additional functions add to the collection of online resources available to fans on the Wimbledon app and Wimbledon.com. They represent the most recent examples of how IBM and Wimbledon are utilising technology to encourage spectators to get more involved with The Championships.
Fans watching match highlights videos will be able to hear audio commentary of significant moments along with captions with the new AI Commentary function. Its debut this year is a step towards providing thrilling commentary for games outside of Wimbledon’s Show Courts, which currently include live human analysis.
In order to make the clips instructive and captivating, generative AI will be used to create narration with a variety of vocabulary and sentence structures.
The IBM AI Draw Analysis, another new element for this year, will employ AI to determine how favourable a player’s path to the final will be in the singles draw. Based on several elements, such as how the player matches up against prospective future opponents and how the player’s position in the draw compares to rivals, a player’s draw favourable will be expressed as a rating along a scale.
Usama Al-Qassab, Marketing & Commercial Director, The All England Club, said:
“We are constantly innovating with our partners at IBM to provide Wimbledon fans, wherever they are in the world, with an insightful and engaging digital experience of The Championships. This year, we’re introducing new features for our digital platforms that use the latest AI technology from IBM to help fans gain even more insight into the singles draw and access commentary on a wider variety of matches through our match highlights videos.“
Jonathan Adashek, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications for IBM, stated:
“IBM is bringing new layers of insight and engagement to the 2023 Championships through the use of innovative new tools, powered by foundation models and generative AI from watsonx. We’ve seen first-hand how these technologies have the power to help major sporting events like Wimbledon to grow their audiences through outstanding digital experiences. The AI and data platform that IBM is using to create unique fan experiences for Wimbledon is the same technology that we’re using to drive business transformation with clients across all sectors and industries.“
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