LONDON: IBM unveiled its plans Tuesday of enriching the broadcast of the Wimbledon 2018 for fans around the world.
The American technology company has been associated with the All England Championships since 1990. Last year, IBM claimed that the world’s most celebrated Grand Slam received 14 million views of video highlights, which were generated by the company’s advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI). It also detected and blocked over 200 million suspicious security events, making this association more valuable for Wimbledon, ahead of its 150th anniversary.
This year, IBM will help Wimbledon provide highlights courtesy its ‘Watson’ and other video and audio technologies to bring to life the most exciting moments of The Championships from the six main courts. Watson is a question-answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language, developed in the company’smassive DeepQA project.
Normally, with an average of three matches per court, per day, video from the matches can quickly add up to hundreds of hours of footage which could take hours to pull together into highlight packages. However, the AI system created by IBM Research scientists and itsiX consultants auto-curates highlights based on analysis of crowd noise, players’ movements and match data to help simplify the highlight video production process and focus on key moments in the match.
The iX team has also been responsible for giving The Wimbledon Channel, the tournament’s live video section on its website, a complete makeover to provide content which can be customized for different audiences, refreshes dynamically and makes the browsing experience more seamless. This has been done keeping in mind that the Wimbledon launched its own broadcast service for the first time this year.
Besides these, IBM has taken up several digital initiatives such as upgrading its ‘SlamTracker’ which works by analysing the players’ Cognitive “Keys” to the Match to understand which tactics to look for in a head-to-head match. The aim is to reveal the hidden patterns in player and match dynamics, determining the pressure situations and allowing fans to follow their progress against their “keys” in real time—point by point. The Watson APIs will refine and update the player style based on match data. A feature referred to as “momentum” will also be additional this time, which is a visual depiction of a match with an indication of which player has the momentum and how that may have shifted over the course of the match.
IBM has helped Wimbledon create its official 2018 Poster as well as a new editorial dashboard for the tournament’s digital team to view and find the most exciting shot of the day or the match and leverage this content across all its digital channels, including social.
“People are judging Wimbledon on the experience they had last month, or even yesterday. Technology plays a really important role in making their digital channels the most engaging place to experience The Championships. Increasingly, the AELTC (All England Lawn Tennis Club) is embracing the role of AI as being a foundation of that digital experience and strategy,” Sam Seddon, Wimbledon Client & Programme executive, IBM said.
Alexandra Willis, head of Communications, Content & Digital at the AELTC noted: “The solutions that IBM uses to improve the fan, player and media experience at Wimbledon are the same technologies and solutions that are used to transform industries and professions. Supporting Wimbledon in achieving their mission statement requires constant innovation and transformation to not only meet but exceed their expectations. This is why IBM has been Wimbledon’s technology and innovation partner since 1990.
“2018 marks the 150th anniversary of founding of The All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, with the first Championships following in 1877. We strive to ensure that our traditions are made relevant in the context of today and are determined not to rest on our laurels.
“We want to engage with existing as well as new fans around the world, to help them be part of Wimbledon 2018, especially in what will be such a competitive sporting summer. We want to tell the stories of the phenomenal athleticism of our great players, the gladiatorial nature of the matches they play and explain the sporting narratives that will cut through to our audience. IBM is critical to us in helping us place content with fans where they want to consume it and acknowledge the ever-increasing focus on video and new content formats in social media.”
