IBM and the All England Lawn Tennis Club have launched Match Chat, an interactive AI chatbot powered by IBM’s watsonx platform, to answer fans’ real-time questions during Wimbledon singles matches. The innovation represents part of a year-round digital transformation strategy aimed at increasing fan engagement and growing tennis’s global audience through “snackable content” and interactive experiences.
What you should know: The new AI tools are designed to make tennis more accessible and engaging for fans during live matches.
- Match Chat uses IBM’s Granite large language models to respond to both pre-set questions and natural language inputs from fans during singles matches.
- An enhanced “Likelihood to Win” tool now provides real-time win statistics that update as matches unfold, replacing the previous pre-match-only version.
- Both tools were developed using IBM’s “garage method,” starting with sketches and evolving through design thinking processes.
The big picture: This represents a strategic shift from pushing data to fans toward creating interactive experiences that draw them into digital platforms.
- Kevin Farrar, IBM Partnership Executive to the All England Lawn Tennis Club, explained: “We’re really looking at making the existing apps and experiences for fans more consumable. People want snackable content and so we’re looking at how to make these platforms more sticky – we want people to go into digital platforms and stay in them.”
- The approach reflects a broader trend toward making sports consumption more interactive and data-driven.
How it works: The innovation follows a structured year-round development cycle that tests concepts at major tournaments.
- IBM and the All England Lawn Tennis Club run ideation workshops each spring, test concepts behind the scenes at the U.S. Open and Wimbledon, then finalize features for the following year’s championships in autumn.
- Generative AI automates pre-match content creation while human editorial teams focus on areas requiring human attention.
- “We use automation to address any anomalies that may occur – and allow teams to focus on what needs human attention,” Farrar said. “This is really about AI and humans working together.”
Why this matters: The real-time engagement tools are designed to fuel fan debate and social media interaction.
- “This kind of structure drives fan engagement because fans love debate,” Farrar noted. “It gets people talking and makes for a great social tile to draw people into the digital platform.”
- Early results show engagement with Match Chat has increased by 300% compared with last year’s innovations.
The innovation strategy: The partnership demonstrates how sports organizations are using AI to transform fan experiences beyond traditional broadcasting.
- The tools represent a move toward making tennis data more consumable and interactive rather than passively received.
- The approach prioritizes keeping fans within digital platforms longer through engaging, real-time content.
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