How Wimbledon is embracing AI to improve fans' experience

All England Club joining forces with IBM to provide cutting-edge tools for app and website users

Breaking with tradition, the All England Lawn Tennis Club is embracing technology to boost the Wimbledon website and app experience. AFP

Wimbledon is embracing technology by offering AI-generated commentary on its highlights reels and providing new data-driven insights to bolster fans' experience at this year's tournament.

With its reputation for tradition, the pristine lawns of the All England Club may not seem not seem the most likely frontline for the artificial intelligence revolution.

But this year organisers at SW19 are c and provide AI analysis, including one handy tool that can predict which players have the easiest path to the final.

The tools are available on the Wimbledon website and on its app, which they say will allow fans to engage with this year's championships on "a deeper level".

IBM first pioneered the use of AI to curate video highlights reels in 2017, a feat which this year won the company an Emmy Award.

Expanding this model will enable tennis fans to enjoy play-by-play narration for the start and end of each reel.

The product is a major undertaking. Employees at IBM have been able to harvest from a trove of data, allowing programmers to draw source material from nearly 130 million documents.

That data is then used to create a large language model which is fine-tuned to generate commentary tailored to include Wimbledon-specific phrases, such as “gentlemen’s draw” rather than “men’s draw.”

The generative AI is also tweaked to produce more varied narration and vocabulary to make the clips informative and engaging, the creators say.

The tool using generative AI technology will provide commentary for highlights videos on the Wimbledon website and app. AFP

The team behind the tool will be monitoring its performance throughout the tournament to ensure everything goes to plan.

In addition, IBM's draw analysis tool uses AI to define how favourable the path to the final might be for each player in the singles draw.

A player's draw favourability will be indicated with a rating along a scale, which could help tennis fans to uncover anomalies and potential surprises. These would not have been obvious by simply looking at the seedings and ranking, say the creators.

Intriguingly, British no 1 Cameron Norrie has been tipped to reach the men's final this year, according to AI analysis by IBM.

Wimbledon organisers see the move as providing more access to the sporting public to the elite tournament in South-west London. "This year, we're introducing new features for our digital platforms that use the latest AI technology from IBM to help fans gain even more insight into the singles draw and access commentary on a wider variety of matches through our match highlights videos" said Usama Al Qassab, marketing and commercial director at The All England Club.

Wimbldeon 2023 Day 3

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  David Beckham in the royal box of Centre Court on day three of the 2023 Wimbledon championships at the All England Club on Wednesday, July 5, 2023. PA

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  Former Manchester united star and MLS club Inter Miami co-owner David Beckham with his mother Sandra at Wimbledon on Wednesday. EPA

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  David Beckham watches the women's singles match between Daria Kasatkina and Jodie Burrage. Getty

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  David Beckham greets Luke Donald as they take their seats in the royal box. PA

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  British TV personality Bear Grylls attends at the Wimbledon championships. EPA

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  English golfer Luke Donald with wife Diane Antonopoulos at Wimbledon on Wednesday. Getty

Also being introduced this year is the IBM Power Index, which provides AI-powered analysis of player momentum.

It combines "advanced statistical analysis and the natural language processing of IBM Watson to mine millions of expert opinions and performance metrics, quantifying each player's momentum from tournament to tournament", the creators say.