How IBM Redefined the Digital Experience for Sports in 2020 and Beyond
While 2020 has challenged our industry, it also forced IBM to transform the digital experience of sports. And the result has been a raft of innovation that will benefit generations of fans.
“We’re seeing two- or three-year’s worth of digital transformation take place in a matter of months,” says Noah Syken, vice president of sports and entertainment partnerships at IBM.
Syken’s team is responsible for delivering the digital experience at the Masters and the U.S. Open tennis championship. To meet the demands of sports-starved fans during the pandemic, his team had to rapidly accelerate the development and deployment of new features across its platforms. “Back in March, we weren’t sure there would be any sports this year,” he says. “By May, we were working harder and faster than ever before.”
At the heart of these efforts were two crucial technologies that allowed IBM to quickly build new engagement platforms for fans: hybrid cloud and AI.
“The truth is we’ve been preparing for years,” says John Kent, who manages the tech team behind the Masters and U.S. Open apps. “We couldn’t have predicted a pandemic, of course. But we’ve been migrating our clients to hybrid cloud environments because they’re more open and flexible. So when COVID hit, we had all the tools we needed to manage remote work and accelerate development.”
The moves paid off. In just 12 weeks, IBM was able to develop Open Questions with Watson, which uses AI to curate tennis debates on the U.S. Open website and app. Want to know if Roger Federer is the greatest of all time? Using natural language processing, Open Questions is able to analyze millions of articles and expert analysis to generate arguments for and against. And fans flocked to the website to add their own opinions.
“We found a fun way to bring AI to life in the context of tennis,” says Kristi Kolski, who managed the marketing of Open Questions. “And we reached a broader audience than we normally would have.”
In November, when the world’s best golfers teed off at Augusta National, IBM debuted My Group on the Masters app. The new feature allowed golf fans to watch every shot, on every hole, from every player in this year’s tournament. And in between shots, Watson served up AI-generated highlights of the best and most crucial moments, analyzing more than 20,000 video clips for excitement levels.
“This is what AI can do,” says Kent. “It takes mountains of information and turns it into insight. And that enables the Masters digital team to do things that were impossible just a few years ago.”
These new capabilities will deliver benefits for many years to come, in the sports industry and beyond. “These are the same technologies we’re using to reimagine customer service or transform the banking industry,” says Syken. “It doesn’t matter what line of business you’re in, flexibility, speed and insight will never go out of style.”
In fact, IBM is already developing hybrid cloud and AI solutions for the Overwatch League, its newest partnership. And no matter what 2021 brings, the team is ready for it.
Says Kent: “We’re prepared for anything.”
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