Wimbledon Serves Up AI And Real-Time Insights In 2017 Digital Push

The second pillar of focus, data, is of course a consideration in all sports tournaments these days. Wimbledon’s challenge is to increase the understanding of tennis by “democratising data” and making it available to all fans.

One way it is doing this is through IBM Slamtracker, an online scoreboard that lets fans keep track of everything that’s going on. New to this year will be a preview state, providing head to head statistics and information on where pressure points might occur.

But the feature the AELTC is most excited about is something it is calling “competitive margin”, which is essentially a form or real-time alerting that aims to keep fans abreast of the most exciting matches.

“This is specifically comparing the forced and unforced error ratio of players against each other, with the ambition of trying to communicate to our fanbase that, yes there are 128 matches going on at any one time over the first two days of the championships, but these are the ones that you really should pay attention to,” said Willis.

“You might think it’s the one on Centre Court that happens to feature Roger Federer or Rafa Nadal, but actually we’re saying that this match out on court 18 between two players you may never of heard of is likely to be just as enthralling.

“We’re very excited about that and again the idea is to test and learn from this to then be able to embed it throughout our digital programme for next year.”

Next-gen engagement

The final pillar, technology, is targeted at avid sports fans, with the overall aim of increasing engagement through video.

The Wimbledon.com website had video on the homepage when it was first launched, by the AELTC is taking things a step further this year by “trying to embed video in every piece of content we create and all with the aim of deepening engagement.”

This message spreads across all digital platforms, with social media of course playing a key role. Content from this year’s tournament will be created in Spanish for the first time, with extra focus also being given to the Korean and Indian markets.

In terms of specific platforms, there will be several “bespoke applications”. including Wimbledon-branded Snapchat lenses, Twitter emojis and Facebook frames to appeal to a wider range of fans.

Facial recognition and data analytics will be used to auto-generate highlights packages for the first time. Video editors already have access to feeds of statistics that can be embedded into video files, but IBM’s Watson is taking things a step further.

“We looked at that and we saw an opportunity to enhance it and use that information even more,” explained Seddon, highlighting the use of crowd noise and visual image recognition to supplement the stats.

“You might have 15 or 20 break point opportunities in a match, but in a 90-second highlight reel you don’t have the opportunity to show all of them. So which one is the most important? By combining those three elements we’re able to rapidly create those highlight reels, create graphics and present those to the editorial team so they can get that content out quicker to the fans who want to see it.

“The frees up that editorial team to do other things, write other news stories and articles. It’s allowing Wimbledon to do more,” a theme that is prevalent across all the innovations to appear at this year’s Championships.

Quiz: What do you know about sport and technology?