How Wimbledon is Using AI and Machine Learning Now

For me, Wimbledon is one of the sporting highlights of the year. In previous Championships, I was lucky enough to be invited by IBM to see first-hand how the world’s oldest tennis tournament was using cutting-edge technology to create amazing spectator experiences.

Today, Wimbledon has become a technology-driven media operation, consistently refining its ability to keep fans engaged with the game in increasingly immersive and personalized ways. The AI of IBM Watson has been at the heart of this digital transformation.

Much of it began with the introduction of “SlamTracker.” The structured data that feeds into SlamTracker has enabled IBM to develop several fan-centric experiences, including automated match, day, and tournament highlight reels that are ready for viewing within minutes of the action concluding. Machine learning algorithms process everything from in-game statistics (how many aces were served?), player gestures such as fist pumps, and even the reactions of the crowd to identify highlights. These are then packaged into "snackable" content that can be quickly broadcast and shared across social media. In 2017 – the first year this technology was unleashed – it was credited with generating 200 million video views.

While Wimbledon's data team continues to build on these innovations in recent years (more on that in a minute), there's also been a major focus on moving from a reactive to a pro-active model of content creation. For example, several years ago, the success of three Canadian players who all reached the semi-final stage caused an unexpected narrative shift, generating a huge amount of excitement about the future of Canadian tennis. New systems that have since been developed are designed to predict when these narrative shifts may occur, enabling more relevant and timely content that's in-tune with the zeitgeist.

Power Rankings

This move towards a more proactive approach of generating fan engagement and immersion will be helped by new innovations like IBM Power Rankings with Watson. This is a way of monitoring and recording a player's progress in the run-up to the competition, including their on-court performances as well as media coverage and social media interest. The idea is that this will give a new level of insight into the excitement and momentum that's been built up around individual players, increasing visibility around their historic wins or heroic failures and possible career-defining moments that may emerge. This might include ramping up the interest and coverage when players who have an established rivalry come face-to-face or recognizing the potential for dramatic underdog victories, or even matches where players have not previously met, but their performance records indicate that sparks might fly.

An initial implementation of this will be seen in the “Ones to Watch” feature – these will be previews of players who have been identified by Watson AI for fans to keep an eye on, because they have moved significantly in the rankings, or perhaps because they are identified as having the capability to exceed expectations.?

IBM Power Rankings content will also be available in an AI fact sheet called Pre-Match Insights with Watson, ahead of every singles match, giving in-depth insights into the data on each player that could influence events on the day. Natural language technology is used both to identify insights from human-generated sources (such as news reports), and to convert structured statistics into human-language commentary.

Personalization

Automated highlights and in-depth match analysis certainly help to keep Wimbledon on the cutting-edge of audience engagement, but the next level of fan experiences could also be a highly personal affair. From 2021, AI algorithms will be built into the tournament’s Rules-Based Recommendation Engine and will be used to generate content and coverage tailored to individual viewers. This will be done by learning which players a particular viewer likes to watch and surfacing recommendations that are likely to interest them.

For example, the system will potentially pick up on whether a fan is primarily interested in headline-grabbing tournament champions, players from their own country, up-and-coming young hotshots, or a mixture of all-of-the-above. Personalization is a very hot consumer trend in technology right now, and automated systems that can carry out mass-personalization are all the rage in e-commerce – such supermarkets creating personalized "special offers" for customers based on what stock they need to sell and what specific customers are likely to buy. Applying this principle to media coverage of sports and other headline events is an exciting new step in what's possible with AI.?

Over the two weeks of the tournament, IBM expects to collect and analyze around 4.5 million data points on players, matches, weather and environmental conditions, and the audience itself. As it has proven with SlamTracker, it has reached the point where collecting the data is no longer the challenge, as virtually everything that happens, on or off-court, can be captured and recorded thanks to the ability to scale with the IBM Cloud. Today, the aim of the game is to use the data to package the tournament in ways that fit with the changing habits and lifestyles of its millions of fans. This simply wouldn't be possible without AI and is a further sign of how this immensely powerful technology is continuing to re-shape the world of sports and entertainment.

Learn more about the IBM and Wimbledon partnership: https://ibm.biz/Bdfm4G

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About Bernard Marr

Bernard Marr?is a world-renowned futurist, influencer and thought leader in the field of business and technology. He is the author of 18 best-selling books, writes a regular column for Forbes and advises and coaches many of the world’s best-known organisations. He has over 2 million social media followers and was ranked by LinkedIn as one of the top 5 business influencers in the world and the No 1 influencer in the UK.