AI in Sports: The Data-Driven Game Plan for Success

Running the right play at the right time, guided by the right insight is crucial in any game. It can deliver a win for teams — and their fans.

AI is creating exciting opportunities today for sports and betting organizations looking for ways to beat the competition by enhancing their personalized fan engagement strategies, creating new monetization opportunities, and boosting existing league and team operations strategies using the best tools available.

As sports organizations strive to meet rising fan expectations and stay competitive, leaders across the industry are leveraging AI to win.

Know your opponent

Establishing winning strategies on and off the field requires a team effort. It also takes research, knowledge, strategy and, most of all, time.

Sports organizations deploy significant resources to collect mountains of data on fans, players and more. Legacy systems, old approaches and segmented data can make it challenging to mine and maximize results from structured data, like ticket or merchandise purchase transactions, and unstructured data, like game footage.

Employing the latest in AI and machine learning (ML) delivers a deep bench of virtual teammates that can deploy predictive analytics to accelerate, streamline and improve the quality of the data, or allow sports organizations to leverage technology and information to give them something everyone in both the front and back offices craves: a winning edge.

Beef up your playbook

Think of a modern data strategy as your game plan: It’s enabling organizations to ask honest questions about the state of their data, strengthen their weaknesses, elevate their strengths and — crucially — realize cost savings and drive efficiencies.

Once teams get their data house in order, gen AI is being used to open up new opportunities to create more meaningful experiences for fans, drive more value for sponsors, and improve player and team performance. The growing gen AI market offers tremendous opportunities across the sports ecosystem with a modern data strategy the top sports organizations are already deploying:

• Personalized fan engagement and marketing: Enhanced loyalty programs, customized content recommendations and tailored marketing campaigns standing on the shoulders of ML, gen AI and Fan 360 are allowing sports organizations to find — and thrill — wider audiences through personalized experiences.

• Automated content creation and enhancement: Sports organizations are using gen AI to uplevel broadcast and streaming experiences for fans. They are automating alternate commentary options and the translation of broadcasts into multiple languages.  They are also automating data-driven visualizations that are incorporated into broadcasts to engage fans from the most casual to the most passionate.

• Player and team performance analysis: Leading organizations are maximizing performance and protecting the well-being of athletes by using gen AI and ML to analyze player data, including physical metrics and past performances, to understand individual player strengths and weaknesses and develop personalized training regimens. They’re also leveraging automated insights toward roster-building strategies and using gen AI to analyze opposing teams and simulate games as part of developing game plans.  

• Sponsorship activation: Optimizing sponsorship implementation is becoming more important as increasing sports media rights fees are causing sponsorships to get more expensive. Gen AI, along with ML, is enabling thoughtful and rewarding implementations to help organizations ensure sponsors remain top-of-mind for audiences.

• Key metrics for sponsorship measurement: Sponsors are seeing the bang for their buck, using advanced analytics to track impressions, measure reach and brand awareness, analyze demographics, assess brand sentiment, offer competitor analysis and sales metrics, and more.

Changing the game with a modern data and AI strategy

In this dynamic landscape, sports organizations harnessing the power of traditional AI/ML, gen AI and data, and adopting a modern data strategy are the ones with the winning team. 

In any sport, sometimes a team is its own toughest opponent. Both in the front office and on the field, that can look like:

• Legacy technology platforms or tools that are no longer agile

• A shallow bench of staff tasked with managing a massive data lift

• A lack of hardware and software tools to help the team be flexible and nimble

Organizations updating their playbook to include a modern data strategy enables them to create a connected data ecosystem that gives their team an edge over the competition.

The leading modern data cloud platforms lend crucial strategy — and strengths — to your organization:

• Reduced complexity: Sports organizations, like all other organizations, often grapple with managing complex, customized AI solutions. Bridging the gap between technical data teams and business and sports operations teams is a challenge. A data cloud’s ability to leverage AI to evaluate and interpret sprawling yet specific data is empowering sports organizations to fully utilize AI-driven tools for performance analysis or fan engagement. 

• Lower total cost of ownership: Handling vast amounts of data from player and fan interactions for AI models can be expensive and time-consuming. Modern data cloud platforms, which allow you to bring all your data into one secure, governed place, are set up so you only pay for what you use. And they’re lower risk because they manage the infrastructure risk for you. 

• Easy to use: Modern data clouds are fully managed platforms, removing the overhead of managing infrastructure. They’re flexible, allowing for agility and efficiency. And they offer faster implementation — and success. 

• Baked-in security and governance: Sports organizations handle sensitive data — including fan data and proprietary performance strategies — and that must be privacy-protected. Ensuring the platform has proper oversight of AI tools used to analyze player stats and engage fans is essential, as is adhering to regulations related to data privacy and AI ethics.

Are you ready to play?

These are just a few of the ways gen AI and a robust data strategy are helping sports organizations grow and mobilize their fans, increase revenue, and improve on-the-field operations. Teams investing in a modern data strategy are capitalizing on new opportunities, making their data more complete and actionable, and staying ahead of the competition.

Ready to learn more about tackling the challenge? Download our ebook, Game Changer: How Gen AI is Revolutionalizing Sports.