The News: New IBM cloud and AI feature enhancements debuted at the Wimbledon 2022 tennis championships this last week, bolstering digital fan experiences around the world and keeping tennis lovers better connected to the players, matches and the overall tournament in London. A new “Win Factors” feature adds details on how IBM’s AI systems provide insights into upcoming Wimbledon matches, while a new interactive “Have Your Say” feature allows Wimbledon fans opportunities to register their own predictions for tennis matches at the event. IBM has been the official technology partner of The Championships for 33 years. Read the full IBM Press Release.
Analyst Take: IBM Cloud and AI are the latest tools that IBM uses to help the Wimbledon tennis championships deliver great experiences for tennis fans and players since IBM signed on 33 years ago as the official technology partner of the event. And now, with two more cloud and AI enhancements to again bolster the digital experiences of Wimbledon fans the world over, IBM has again hit the mark to make this year’s tennis championships even more interesting and interactive for fans.
IBM’s cloud, hybrid cloud, and AI capabilities and services are already in broad use by enterprises around the world, and Wimbledon has been no exception. Working together, the All England Lawn Tennis Club – the organizers of the Wimbledon championship – and IBM created the Wimbledon website and a Wimbledon app for tennis fans to stay up to date on the events. Both the app and website take advantage of powerful IBM Watson technologies that led to specialized Wimbledon-focused services, including the IBM Power Index with Watson, IBM Match Insights with Watson, and Personalized Recommendations, and Highlights Reels.
The latest IBM Cloud and AI capabilities are great incremental upgrades that add cool new features for Wimbledon fans to gain intriguing new insights into the matches and players at the 2022 Wimbledon championships.
The “Win Factors” upgrade is particularly helpful for fans. Here, IBM Cloud and AI are delivering what IBM calls “enhanced explainability” to the existing Match Insights feature created by IBM in the past. “Win Factors” provides fans with an increased understanding of the elements affecting player performance, such as the IBM Power Index, court surface, player rankings, head-to-head comparisons, ratio of games won, net of sets won, recent performance, yearly success, and comments from tennis media pundits.
The other new interactive feature, the “Have Your Say” upgrade, for the first time gives Wimbledon fans the opportunity to register their own predictions for match outcomes between players using the Wimbledon app and on Wimbledon.com. This is exceptionally cool for the diehard tennis fan to be able to make and compare their own Wimbledon match predictions with the aggregated predictions of other fans and with the AI-powered “Likelihood to Win” predictions generated by IBM and Watson.
This capability is bound to help drive excitement and bragging rights during this year’s championships. I also love that this is a very public use of important technologies that show the world what they can do in events where millions of eyes are watching.
Underpinning these new IBM Cloud and AI features at Wimbledon 2022 are IBM Watson and IBM hybrid cloud, using a combination of on-premises systems, private clouds, and IBM Cloud. In this system, IBM Cloud provides the foundation and scalability for the digital experiences by hosting and processing data from matches that are fed into AI models built using IBM Watson Studio and IBM Watson Discovery.
It is fun to watch each year as IBM Cloud and AI find new ways of enhancing digital fan experiences at Wimbledon in the last few years through IBM Watson and other important technologies. IBM works this magic in other sports as well. In 2020, for example, IBM Watson worked with ESPN Fantasy Football to make player “trades” more equitable for millions of fantasy football participants.
It will be interesting to see how these new IBM Cloud and AI feature enhancements improve the 2022 Wimbledon tournament for its fans around the world.
The Championships at Wimbledon run from June 20 through July 10, 2022.
Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.
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