IBM continues its partnership with ALTEC this year with innovative cognitive solutions to help the visitor and media. The Wimbledon Open Tennis Championships are overseen by ALTEC, the operating company for the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. They look after the only tennis grand slam destination on grass.
IBM’s press-release say they are improving their support for the media and visitors by helping change fans perceptions, leveraging AI to aid the visitor, using AI in the selecting video highlights across the main courts, helping fans understand what it takes to become the greatest.
“We are excited for this year’s developments, yet again improving and developing our digital strategy for fans to make the most of their experience year-on-year. In an increasingly competitive sporting landscape, IBM’s technology innovations are critical to continuing our journey towards a great digital experience that ensures we connect with our fans across the globe – wherever they may be watching and from whatever device that may be. With help from IBM, we are providing new on-site features in the SmartPhone apps such as the ‘Ask Fred’ assistant, allowing fans to plan their day at The Championships and make the most of their visit. Similarly, we are working with IBM to access additional insights in order for our fans to truly understand and share the moments that matter. This year, a combination of design and data driven content and insights will provide fans with the unique Wimbledon experience they expect and more.” – Alexandra Willis, Head of Communications, Content & Digital, AELTC.
IBM SlamTracker is a new application that provides scores, stats and insights into the matches in progress. This provides dynamically updated information from the 4.2 million data points collected across the 19 courts during the championship. Analysis provides point by point statistics that appear in both the mobile app and on-site via the media support feeds. Expect your favourite commentator to drop in random facts about the game from these snippets.
Video highlights are also available, which an AI supported tool curates. This ranks crowd noise, players movements and match data to select videos covering key points around the championship. With so many courts providing play simultaneously, this is a good way to keep up with everything across the championship. These can then be shared on social media directly from the app.
IBM has also trained their AI. They used data on played points in the championship since 1990; newspaper articles since 1995; the contents of the www.wimbledon.com blogs and website; and 10 Wimbledon annuals. These points are used to respond to social media about #WhatMakesGreat champions.
In addition, the mobile app now has a feature called ‘Ask Fred’, named after Fred Perry. This uses the IBM’s Watson APIs related to natural language processing to answer questions about Wimbledon, such as where to eat.
IBM uses their Bluemix cloud platform, which provides access to cognitive APIs, cloud application services and infrastructure. IBM’s SPSS statistical analysis software provides some of the data that is reported. In addition, IBM’s QRadar Advisor with Watson security platform protects the www.wimbledon.com site.
So as well as the play on the court, there is a lot going on behind the scenes. Enjoy the tennis over the next few weeks, and we’ll see #WhatMakesGreat tennis.
