Just in time for the forthcoming World Cup in Russia, FOX Sports and IBM are launching an artificial intelligence collaboration across multiple FOX Sports properties and programming.
Described as historic and the first of its kind for the broadcaster, the partnership will see FOX Sports tap IBM Watson Media’s specialised AI video technology and digital agency IBM iX’s expertise in designing user experiences to streamline production workflows to classify, edit and access match highlights in near real-time. IBM adds that the advancements to production and distribution will enable FOX Sports to curate video clips and match highlights.
Putting the task into context, the companies noted that the event will see 64 matches played over 32 days by 32 competing teams. The 2014 World Cup attracted 3.2 billion viewers on television and an estimated 280 million online viewers. Overall, 98,087 hours of video footage was broadcast to billions of fans. With even more viewers expected this tie round, the companies say that the task requires a huge amount of processing power to streamline production workflows.
The collaboration will kick off with the launch of The Highlight Machine, an interactive experience, designed and developed by IBM iX to empower fans to browse FIFA’s entire archive of past matches and create custom highlights from both the historic footage and content from the 2018 tournament. Fans can customise highlights by year, team, player, match, and play type within seconds and share their favourite FIFA moments with the world. Football fans will be able to view and filter highlights by team, player, timeframe and type of gameplay like penalty kicks and goals. To extend the post-match conversation on social media, viewers can save, favourite and share highlight reels as well as automatically generating clips.
“We are delighted to be working with IBM, a leader in the technology space, to help enhance fan experiences and engagement,” said Sarah Tourville, SVP of sports brand activations, FOX Sports. “Our collaboration affords us an opportunity to utilise its technology across multiple properties, helping to drive engagement for our tentpole events in non-traditional ways.”
“To maximise fan engagement, sports broadcasters are driven to showcase relevant gameplay as quickly as possible,” added Kristen Lauria, general manager of Watson media and content at IBM. “This drive is even more critical during tentpole sporting moments like the World Cup. Our project with FOX Sports emphasises IBM’s focus on aligning its technology to simplify how media brands can efficiently deliver winning fan experiences.”