Game On! The Wimbledon Championships: Democratising Experience for All

“Today you’re ‘great,’ tomorrow you’re ‘not,’ but then you’re ‘great’ again. It makes for great stories. Now, I always look at the long term and, by doing that, I can stay calm through the storm.”  Rodger Federer

And what event does this inspiring quote refer to? The unique event that is Wimbledon! As described by record breaking 8 times champion Roger Federer. Making a very welcome return to SW19 for the first time since 2019, and with IBM as its official technology partner for the 32nd year, this is the very essence of trusted innovation partnership. Focussing in on Digital Transformation, it is truly embedded by design and there are some fantastic examples of innovation to look forward to this year. But before moving onto this, I think it is a good moment to ‘step back, to step forward’ and bring to the fore just how far we have come, especially regards to the levels of interaction and engagement we as viewers can now enjoy.

It was just over 30 years ago that David Briscoe (1979) published an aspirational piece on the dawn of ‘Teletext: Soon You'll Be Punching Buttons and Talking Back to Your TV."

‘Being able to punch a few buttons to call up a weather report, a news story, or the menu at a Chinese restaurant onto your TV screen is no longer science fiction. A Salt Lake City TV station is experimenting with such a system now, and its chief engineer says everyday use is just a few years away’. 

At the time, this transmission of text and graphics to a television set was the height of innovation bringing 24/7 and on-demand news delivery straight into your home. The BBC's teletext service, the longest running in the world, finally went offline at 23:32:19 BST on October 23, 2012, after 38 years. This example provides the context for a move from user-to-information proximity as offered by Teletext, to user-to-information co-creation and as we edge closer to 2030, user-to-information autonomy or as I call it – the rise of ‘MyMedia’.  

Talking back to your TV will take on a whole new meaning and we are already seeing developments establish this significant communications change. At the last Wimbledon Championships, I was very fortunate to see first-hand how the event’s partnership with IBM and especially the application of its artificial intelligence Watson, supported by hybrid cloud technology, was driving experiences for fan, player and media alike. Traditionally with sporting events, not all highlights are made equal and the impact of a crowd favourite player and impassioned crowd could create biased higher ‘excitement levels’ vis a vis a more reserved or less known, but equally talented opponent. With IBM Watson, match highlights can be ranked by analysing live footage of the crowd excitement levels, player reactions and gameplay statistics whist identifying and mitigating bias. IBM Watson OpenScale removed the bias that can be found in some of these data points.

Fast forward to this summer, IBM continues to further innovate supported by the flexibility of Red Hat OpenShift! Especially the opportunity for fans to become directly involved in the ‘great stories’ Roger Federer so vividly describes. And even more impressive when you consider that IBM collects and analyses 4.5 million tennis data points at Wimbledon each year, and is able to make highlights available within just 2 minutes of a match finishing. That’s incredible processing power! Aligned with IBM’s focus on data, natural language processing and automation, 2 brand new fan experiences have been developed and made available on Wimbledon.com and the Wimbledon app.

IBM Power Rankings with Watson

First, is the introduction of IBM Power Rankings with Watson to create a dynamic index of a player’s momentum and velocity from historical and forecasted trends. It brings together a variety of structured and unstructured data sources on a player’s most recent match history, daily performance, media commentary and forecasted trends. All achieved through the integrative power of IBM Cloud, advanced statistical analysis, machine learning, prescriptive optimization and the Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities of IBM Watson.  These technologies enable interpretation of trends and insights that can otherwise remain hidden in large data sets. This truly affords a 360-degree view of player performance that updates every single day of the tournament. The following predictive insights are available through the tooling of IBM Watson Studio, AutoAI and Watson Machine Learning.

• Ones to Watch -- A pre-tournament view of players who have moved significantly up or down in the rankings.
• Upset Alerts -- Matches in which the IBM Power Rankings favour the lower seeded player.
• Likelihood to Win – IBMPower Rankings assign a win probability to both players prior to the match.  

IBM Pre-Match Insights with Watson

Building on the highly successful launch of Match Insights with Watson at the US Open in 2020, another innovation this year is the launch of Pre-Match Insights with Watson. This state of the art AI-generated match ‘fact sheet’ provides a ‘head-to-head’ comparison of the opposing players for every single match in the tournament, including the IBM Power Rankings, and even generating a likelihood to win result ahead of a ball even being served. Impressive! I love how this empowers fans to become instant “experts” about the players and all the championship match-ups ahead of time!  

An ‘In the Media’ section provides further details, using NLP technology to search for and understand millions of blogs, articles and thought leader commentary leading into a match, to gather the most relevant information, leveraging IBM Watson Discovery. Additionally, a ‘By the Numbers’ section translates structured data such as historical statistics from prior matches into narrative form. This enables fans to access pertinent fact-based insights on the players and their opponents ahead of match play, leveraging open source AI technologies such as natural language generation (NLG) alongside IBM Decision Optimisation.

Rules-Based Recommendation Engine

Complementing these new fan experiences is the Rules-Based Recommendation Engine which enables seamless integration across Wimbledon’s digital platforms with a personalised experience. Learning from fan preferences, the engine will offer ‘picked for you’ recommended players fostering new discoveries for fans, and with these recommendations evolving over the course of the tournament too. With this innovation, you can quite literally curate the experience that is meaningful for you – brilliant!

The Pillar of Hybrid Cloud

Finally, the critical role of hybrid cloud in delivering all of these incredible event experiences cannot be overstated. Indeed this involves the combination of on-premises systems, private clouds, and IBM Cloud, and specific features built as containerised apps and deployed on leading enterprise Kubernetes platform Red Hat OpenShift. In essence, this integration provides another engine – that powers flexibility, efficiency, and an accelerated pace of innovation.

So what are you waiting for! As Roger Federer said, Wimbledon is the home of ‘great stories’. Today, empowered by IBM’s integrative technology innovations, not only can you be fully informed of all the insights and engage on the topics you care about the most – but you can have a personalised experience. This is the ‘Game. Set. Match.’ of an event and technology partnership! I cannot wait to dive into my content and enjoy these new experiences.