IBM’s Watson powers Wimbledon to new heights

Although going to Wimbledon to watch the tennis has long been a key date for financial services companies keen to court new, and old, clients, it was not where you’d expect go to see examples of transformative customer services.

But the 150th anniversary of the competition is seeing some interesting uses of technology to change the way spectators and fans around the world interact with the sport, the venue and the competition as a whole.

The All England Lawn Tennis Club is using intelligent technology to transform itself from a historic sporting event organiser to a full service, data-driven media company. It is using technology to gain a deeper insight into its audience as well as using it to bring together the physical experience of visiting the club with the digital and social media experience. It hopes to give the audience physically present at matches a better experience as well as deepening engagement with fans around the world.

The AELTC is using various parts of IBM’s Watson AI technology to change Wimbledon fortnight for visitors and fans.

IBM’s Watson will power ‘Fred’ the virtual assistant and chatbot who helps visitors to the club get the most from their visit. This year Fred will also be available via Facebook messenger and will be more fan and social media focused than ever before.

Similar chatbots are used by banks to provide customer information and advice, often without the need for any human intervention.

IBM’s Watson is also powering cognitive, AI-assisted highlights of video footage to support the Lawn Tennis Association strategic shift to fully fledged media organisation. IBM used Watson to create the Wimbledon Cognitive Highlights Solution system which can automatically select, edit and package highlights for use on the web or by broadcasters. To do this Watson first uses audio and video tools to choose the most interesting points of play. It analyses players behaviour and crowd responses as well as scoring information to find the most important and exciting parts of any match.

Watson’s Visual Recognition classifier is then used to identify just the footage suitable for broadcast and remove any non-essential content. It was even taught to recognise the end-of-match handshake to use as the final sequence of every package.

The system then checks each clip was in the right place in the game order before sending content onto the asset manager system for watermarking, adding graphics and transitions. Clips will then go automatically for distribution on the Wimbledon website’s content management system.

Last year this reduced turnaround time from an hour to just fifteen minutes. It created 250 video highlight packages which helped produce 200m video views on all platforms. The project proved so successful that it has created a template production approach which IBM is offering to other sports events.

Although nothing will change the impact of strawberries and cream at Centre Court there clearly are lessons for other organisations looking to transform how they deliver services to new customers.

Accelerating service delivery and providing access to information on any platform are key first steps to making this change.

This year’s day out at Wimbledon could be quite an education for those changing the way the City shapes their infrastructure .