How generative AI is shaping the future of sports

• Executive summary
• The role of technology in sports
• Generative AI enters the sports arena
• AI takes a seat on the bench
• Enhancing the fan experience
• A deeper insight into the sport(s) we love
• The future of the game
• Learnings

Executive summary:

Generative AI is shaking up the world of sports, impacting everything from teams’ training routines to fan experiences. Its ability to analyse massive datasets and extract meaningful insights is providing teams with unprecedented analytical capabilities while simultaneously opening up new avenues for fan engagement.

• Prominent football clubs like Liverpool and Sevilla have already developed their own generative AI tools in partnership with tech companies.
• The Wimbledon tennis tournament has introduced AI-generated commentary for matches.
• LaLiga and NBA are among the first sports leagues to offer AI-powered features designed to improve the fan experience.
• “Generative AI can help us create insights into movement, performance, and health far deeper than the current coach’s eye can process,” says Dr Adam Loiacono, a physical therapist and performance coach.
• “It makes the game more interesting. When you peel off more layers, and you get a better understanding of what’s happening, it becomes more interesting,” explains Jens Melvang, senior product manager at Stats Perform.

As AI continues to permeate every aspect of sports, it raises some intriguing questions about the future of the field. How will it impact fair play and competitive integrity? Will it enhance or diminish the unpredictability that makes sports exciting? And how might it reshape the roles of athletes, coaches, and fans?

The role of technology in sports

Sports are one of our most ancient traditions, serving as a source of entertainment, exercise, and community for millions of people worldwide all the way to the present day. From local community leagues to international competitions, sports bring people together, fostering a sense of unity and shared experience. It is also changing with the times: technology has begun to reshape various aspects of sports, changing how games are played, analysed, and experienced by athletes, commentators, and fans alike.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are at the forefront of this technological shift in sports. These technologies can process and analyse vast amounts of data collected during sporting events, offering unprecedented insights into player performance and team dynamics. Harnessing all this data effectively allows coaches to develop smarter tactics and player strategies based on concrete evidence rather than intuition alone.

Modern technologies are also transforming the fan experience. Mobile apps and social media platforms have created new avenues for fans to engage with their favourite teams and athletes, while live streaming services allow games to be watched from anywhere. Many platforms now include interactive features such as real-time statistics and switchable camera angles. More recently, generative AI has also begun to make its mark on the sports world, with profound implications for teams and fans alike.

Generative AI enters the sports arena

Generative AI promises to give teams a competitive edge by delivering deeper insights while at the same time providing a more engaging and personalised fan experience.

Like many organisations before them, sports teams have developed a bit of an obsession with data. Every game, practice, and player interaction now generates a wealth of information, from basic statistics to complex performance metrics obtained from advanced tracking systems. However, the sheer volume of information poses a significant challenge for analysts and coaches, who must sift through mountains of data to find actionable insights that could give their teams a competitive edge. This is where generative AI becomes relevant, allowing sports organisations to derive maximum value from the swathes of data—and at lightning speed.

Generative AI enables teams to uncover hidden patterns and correlations that may not be immediately apparent to a human observer. Indeed, it has proven particularly valuable in areas like talent scouting, player development, and strategic planning. Coaches can use AI-generated reports to make more informed decisions about lineup configurations, training regimens, and even in-game tactics. Generative AI can also be used to assess opponent tendencies, identify potential mismatches, and suggest optimal strategies, all while continuously learning and adapting to new information.

Fan engagement is another area where generative AI is making inroads. A June 2024 survey conducted by IBM reveals that half of sports fans believe AI will improve their overall experience. When asked about specific applications, 34% of surveyed fans identified real-time updates as a top priority, while 29% expressed interest in personalised content. In response to evolving fan needs, sports organisations are increasingly exploring AI-driven solutions that would allow them to deliver more personalised experiences. These might include customised highlight reels, AI-generated commentary delivered in multiple languages, or interactive platforms that allow fans to engage with virtual representations of their favourite athletes.

While the potential benefits of generative AI in sports are significant, it’s essential to consider the ethical implications and potential drawbacks. There are valid concerns about the privacy of fans’ personal data and the accuracy of AI-generated predictions. Moreover, it’s crucial to remember that sports are fundamentally human endeavours, characterised by unpredictability, raw emotion, and personal narratives. The challenge moving forward will be to integrate AI in a way that enhances rather than diminishes these qualities.

AI takes a seat on the bench

Generative AI has already demonstrated its effectiveness in identifying opponents’ weaknesses, devising more effective strategies, and uncovering hidden talent.

There are already a number of generative AI tools designed to help sports teams improve their performance on the field. One of these is AlphaPlay, a generative AI platform that can analyse massive amounts of sports data, uncover hidden patterns within, and provide teams with actionable insights delivered in clear, natural language. For example, it can help teams instantly identify an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses and provide suggestions on how best to exploit them—something that would have previously required manually studying hours upon hours of match footage. Initially developed for baseball, the platform has been extended to cover several other sports, including football, hockey, and American football.

Sports analytics company Stats Perform has also developed Opta Vision, a set of advanced football metrics that combines event data—every action performed by players and officials on the pitch—with tracking data from stadium cameras and remote video sources to provide deep insights into ‘the beautiful game’. Using a diffusion model, Opta Vision can accurately estimate the position of each player outside the camera’s field of view, providing a dynamic overview of player trajectories throughout the match. This enables coaches to better understand a player’s passing tendencies and assess the quality of their decisions. It also allows them to see how the team’s shape changes during a match and identify which is most effective.

Several prominent football clubs have already made generative AI a part of their training routines. For example, Liverpool Football Club joined forces with Google DeepMind to develop TacticAI, an AI system that employs geometric deep learning to predict the outcome of a corner kick. It enables coaches to simulate a wide range of attacking and defensive scenarios and evaluate how different player setups affect the end result. It can also offer tactical recommendations, such as suggesting optimal player positions that will maximise the probability of a corner kick routine leading to a successful shot attempt—or preventing one, depending on whether the team is in an offensive or defensive setup.

Another area where generative AI can find meaningful use is in player recruitment. Spanish football club Sevilla FC has partnered with IBM to develop an intelligent scouting tool called Scout Advisor. This tool uses both conventional AI and generative AI techniques to analyse the club’s vast player database, along with more than 200,000 text-based scout reports, and generate a curated list of candidates that best match the club’s current needs and budget. “This gives us a significant advantage in the player recruitment process and enables us to find the best players for our team and continue to improve our performance on the pitch,” says José María del Nido Carrasco, president of Sevilla FC.

“Today, AI is creating a similar excitement to what we saw around the early days of the internet.”

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver

Enhancing the fan experience

Generative AI is revolutionising how fans watch, interact with, and experience their favourite sports, bringing them closer to action than ever before.

Generative AI is also set to have a major impact on how fans experience sports. In 2023, All England Club announced that matches at the latest edition of the Wimbledon tennis tournament would be accompanied by AI-generated commentary. The commentary was produced using IBM’s Watsonx platform and made available on the Wimbledon app and website. To create the commentary, IBM first collected all sorts of tracking data, including information about player movement and the type of shots they take. This data was then fed into a chatbot-like system trained specifically in tennis terminology, which used it to generate match commentary in natural language. Finally, the text commentary was fed into another AI, a text-to-speech one, to produce a near-real-time audio commentary for the match.

Similarly, NBCUniversal announced last month that Peacock subscribers will be able to enjoy a new AI-powered feature for the duration of the network’s upcoming coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics. ‘Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock’, as the new feature is called, will provide users with a personalised highlight reel of the previous day’s action based on their sporting preferences. The recap will also include AI-generated narration delivered in the voice of sports broadcasting legend Al Michaels, whose previous appearances on NBC were used to train the AI. According to the network, both the clips and the audio will be reviewed by a team of human editors to ensure they adhere to the network’s standards of quality.

LaLiga, the Spanish football’s top flight, is also experimenting with generative AI. In collaboration with Microsoft and IT services company Globant, the league is launching several new generative AI-powered features designed to provide fans around the world with an improved, more personalised experience. Using a combination of the automatic speech recognition model Whisper and GPT 3.5, the league will generate subtitles in multiple languages for all live sports matches in near real time, enabling people with hearing impairments to keep better track of the action. OpenAI’s generative AI models will also be used to automatically translate content into various languages, as well as provide fans with highly personalised sports content, including match briefings for their favourite clubs.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is also joining in on the action, announcing the addition of a new experimental feature to the league mobile app earlier this year—a voice-activated AI assistant called NB-AI. According to Adam Silver, commissioner for the NBA, the new feature will enable fans to experience basketball games in ways that were “unimaginable” before, delivering a more immersive and personalised viewing experience. Fans will be able to ask the chatbot questions about the game they are watching or even change the appearance of the live stream in real time, making it look like a movie or a cartoon. “Today, AI is creating a similar excitement to what we saw around the early days of the internet,” said Silver.

“All of a sudden, generative AI can give you insights from its own thinking as to what it thinks is useful for winning. What looks random may turn out not to be.”

Brian Hall, founder of generative AI platform AlphaPlay

A deeper insight into the sport(s) we love

Industry experts agree that generative AI will take on a more prominent role in sports in the upcoming years, but they are expressing concerns about some of its applications.

There is a growing consensus among sports professionals that generative AI will have a profound impact both now and in the future. “Generative AI can help us create insights into movement, performance, and health far deeper than the current coach’s eye can process,” says Dr Adam Loiacono, a physical therapist and performance coach with over 15 years of experience in professional sports. Brian Hall, founder of generative AI platform AlphaPlay, is similarly convinced that it can help sports teams make sense of the growing amount of data they collect. “All of a sudden, it can give you insights from its own thinking as to what it thinks is useful for winning,” he remarks. “What looks random may turn out not to be.”

Generative AI could also benefit fans, allowing them to see the sport they love from a different perspective. “It makes the game more interesting. When you peel off more layers, and you get a better understanding of what’s happening, it becomes more interesting,” explains Jens Melvang, senior product manager at sports AI company Stats Perform. “It could be the departure point, and fans will think it’s more interesting because they get more knowledge about the game. It gets a little closer to what the coaches actually think about the game, the different decisions they have to make and so on. So the supporters get a little closer to the game.”

Another area that could be transformed significantly by the emergence of generative AI is sports broadcasting, where the technology could help take some of the burden off of human commentators. “By developing AI strategies in close collaboration with our partners, we believe we can relieve the workload of our talents by delegating certain thankless tasks with low added value to algorithmic assistance,” says Christophe Pasquier, head of innovation at Eurovision Sport. Some have already embraced this possibility. “As a producer, I now have the ability to generate fresh content without expecting my presenter to remain glued to her seat for hours after the competition has finished,” adds Micky Curling, European Broadcasting Union radio senior sports producer.

However, not everyone is convinced that AI commentators are such a good idea. “It’s an art form, really,” says Kevin Sylvester, a sports broadcaster of more than 25 years. “There’s an expertise that goes into it through experience, and being there and to convey that to the viewer or to the listener. And I don’t think any computer can replace that.” Several others agree that AI commentary may be a step too far. “What about the incredible context and history that some of the commentators have?” asks Kaylee Hartung, a Thursday Night Football sideline reporter. “Won’t that be lost with all these new tools?”

The future of the game

The future of sports may be shaped by generative AI, but the human element will always remain a key component.

It’s looking increasingly likely that generative AI will take on a more prominent role in sports in the years ahead. But just how big of a role will it be? Could we one day see the head coach turn to an AI assistant in their hour of need, seeking advice about which play to run, or which player to bring on to change the course of the game? While this scenario may sound a bit far-fetched right now, it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility. To be sure, however, human coaches will always have a place on the bench. The best coaches have the ability to motivate their players; sense when they might need a word of encouragement, or make a bold, unconventional decision that appears to go against common wisdom. AI is not currently capable of any such abilities, nor may it ever be.

As for fans watching at home, the integration of generative AI could dramatically transform the way they experience the sports they love. We could see the emergence of AI commentators that can adapt their style to match each person’s individual preferences, offering in-depth analysis for seasoned fans or simplified explanations for newcomers. AI could also generate instant replays from multiple angles, complete with detailed breakdowns of key plays. It could even allow fans to experience games from different perspectives—including those of players on the field. Instead of Googling a player’s name to find out more about them, fans might simply ask the AI and instantly receive an answer.

Learnings:

While the full extent of generative AI’s impact on sports remains to be seen, it’s clear that the way we play and experience sports is undergoing something of a transformation. Generative AI has the potential to provide coaches with unprecedented strategic insights, enhance player performance, and provide fans with more immersive, personalised experiences.

• Generative AI tools can help sports teams identify opponents’ weaknesses, suggest a more effective tactical approach, and spot hidden talent.
• The technology is also being used to provide fans with AI-generated commentary delivered in their language and personalised highlight reels. 
• 50% of sports fans believe AI will improve their overall experience, reveals an IBM survey.
• 34% of fans highlighted real-time updates as their top priority, while 29% said the same about personalised content.
• AI assistants may even join the coaching staff one day, offering game-changing advice at crucial moments.

As we embrace these advancements, we must not lose sight of what makes sports so captivating in the first place. The unpredictability of a last-minute goal, the emotional rollercoaster of a comeback victory, and the unexpected joy of witnessing an underdog triumph—these are the moments that define sports and capture our hearts. While AI can provide valuable insights and enhance our understanding of the game, its role will always be ancillary, and can never replicate the passion, determination, and spirit that athletes bring to the field.