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Tennis and technology: How Wimbledon gave fans a GenAI experience

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Tennis and technology: How Wimbledon gave fans a GenAI experience

Watching tennis at Wimbledon is no longer just about watching tennis, with the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC) increasingly focused on fan engagement and user experience.

Technology plays a key role in enhancing the Wimbledon experience, with IBM as the main technology partner for over 30 years. In 2023, Wimbledon reached 19 million fans through its digital platforms, showcasing IBM’s latest technologies, including generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) for the 2024 tournament.

According to Bill Jinks, technology director at the AELTC, the goal is to improve fan engagement through AI and other technologies, bringing new data and insights to fans in innovative ways.

Planning ahead

Planning for the tech behind each Wimbledon tournament starts in the spring of the preceding year, with IBM and AELTC teams ideating on the capabilities of the Wimbledon app and website. After each year’s finals, the teams review and commit to plans for the following championships.

IBM captures over 2.7 million data points during the Wimbledon fortnight, providing courtside data for broadcasters. While computer vision technology has been trialled, manual input remains more accurate for now.

Training tradition

IBM uses its Granite foundation model to build the Wimbledon LLM, containing three billion parameters trained in Wimbledon tradition. The underlying infrastructure is a hybrid cloud based on Red Hat’s Openshift container platform.

GenAI capabilities were used to introduce new features, such as player cards and AI-generated spoken commentary. Despite some inaccuracies, GenAI adds to fan engagement and enjoyment of Wimbledon.

Human content complements GenAI, with a team of writers and data scientists providing unique insights for broadcast commentators. Plans for 2025 include more use of GenAI for a multi-modal LLM incorporating audio and video content.

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