Table of Contents
ADVERTISEMENTMost of us have a sport that we just love to watch, whether it’s something more mainstream, such as football and Formula One (F1), or something slightly harder to access regularly, such as equestrianism, strongman or swimming.
And while many super fans have been taking part in fantasy leagues or replaying their favourite goals online for years, generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) is set to democratise the way we can all access, engage with, and enjoy our favourite sports.
Euronews Next spoke to Samira Panah Bakhtiar, General Manager of Media & Entertainment, Games, and Sports at Amazon Web Services (AWS), to find out how they’re helping fans get closer to the action.
F1 insights from inside the car
If you’ve ever watched F1, you probably enjoy the nail-biting speed, driver tactics, and listening in to the team radio – which can often provide comical moments.
Now, by ingesting over a million points of data during every minute of every race throughout a season, across the world, AWS has helped F1 up the viewer experience.
“As viewers are watching it, [AI] can help to predict the overtake rate of a driver against another driver,” Samira explained.
“Just recently, we announced a burn metre where they’re able to now assess how much gasoline is being burned based off the velocity of a driver in any given moment across a turn, or in the case of an overtake. And then they have that burn metre of their gas stack ranked, and that obviously makes a difference in the race”.
In the same way, Germany’s Bundesliga is using AI to calculate the probability of a goal or the speed and velocity of a kick. Fans can access the stats on their app and the Bundesliga has reported an increase in app engagement by 68 per cent.
Lower emissions, more sport
AWS have also worked closely with the European Football League (ELF) to help them streamline their coverage production. Whilst that might just sound like industry lingo, the knock-on effect for football fans is huge, and could be replicated across all sports.
By using the cloud for live sport coverage production, the ELF have reduced the need to transport editors, graphic artists and other crew onsite for events. While this might be less fun for the crew, it massively reduces transport emissions and saves costs.
Across an entire season of games, it was estimated to have saved over 300 tonnes of CO2 emissions. That’s the equivalent of the amount of energy just 40 average homes would use in a year.
“And by democratising the cost of it, you’re able to cover more sports,” Panah Bakhtiar told Euronews Next.
“So we’ve seen a lot of our customers who could traditionally only afford to cover, let’s just call it, tier one events for a full calendar year, now be able to cut the cost down, and then be able to send more people to tier two or tier three sporting events to provide more options”.
With this in mind, it could mean more money available to increase content around less popular sports.
“I grew up riding horses, I love watching equestrians. There’s not a lot of equestrian content out there, but being able to now know that I can find the content that I care about watching when I want to watch it, and the cost for production is coming down, it allows for more choice. I think that’s a really beautiful thing,” Panah Bakhtiar said.
The future of entertainment and sport
She is particularly excited about what AI means for the future of entertainment and fan engagement.
“Gen Z, 47 per cent of them prefer social media and short-form content over that of traditional linear content or streaming content. Actually, their number two preference after social is gaming. And then after that, it’s audio and music.
“So I think the interesting part for me has been seeing how these demographics are creating a lot of volatility, but if you pay attention, the opportunity is quite vast.
“I think last year alone, the entertainment industry generated over a trillion dollars in revenue, with 35 per cent of that coming from online video and 25 per cent of it coming from games, and it’s only growing”.
Panah Bakhtiar thinks that for companies that are willing to be experimental with new products and embrace the use of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and purpose-built services that focus on game or content development, the whole entertainment landscape could be completely reinvented.
“My prediction for the future of entertainment is that it’s multi-dimensional, it’s highly personalised and it’s extremely interactive,” she said.
