HFS Highlight: IBM looks to ace digital fan experience at the US Open

The little sport we have seen during the pandemic has taken place in eerie empty stadiums. Crowds are slowly returning in some cases – but it’ll be a while before we see 80,000+ attendances. Making up for it in the tennis world is IBM at the US Open: the latest example in what was, as we covered pre-COVID, a growing market for digital fan experiences. This doesn’t only apply to sport: all media outlets have their eye on engagement through digital experiences.

In line with HFS’ latest research, IBM’s fan experiences were underpinned by AI and Hybrid Cloud – with recently-acquired RedHat playing a role

Virtual debates and match insights was delivered to US Open fans using IBM Watson Discovery underpinned by IBM’s hybrid cloud architecture. Watson’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) drew from multiple data sets across multiple clouds – interpreting trends and insights. It dealt with subjective “open questions” from fans: the example given was “Is Billie Jean King the most influential tennis player in history?” Match discovery will give fans expert analysis before, during, and after matches. IBM also replicated stadium sound from past footage, responding in real-time to game situations.

IBM’s RedHat OpenShift capability allowed the USTA (US Tennis Association, that IBM has been a technology partner and sponsor of for 29 years) to manage the public-private multi-cloud environment – with the scale and flexibility required to manage, among other things, remote working (for example, USTA statisticians – who need super-low-latency to analyze games in real-time) and the associated data security challenges.

Needless to say, the US Open’s plans had to be implemented rapidly and flexibility. IBM had 12 weeks – from the initial announcement that no fans would be present – to design, develop, test, and deliver the experiences highlighted above. RedHat’s enabled flexibility across multiple clouds allowed for an agile and scalable process.

HFS and KPMG’s Enterprise Reboot survey highlights how “AI-powered” and “cloud-enabled” are the leading features of transformation engagements; IBM is staying on-script, powered by pandemic circumstance for this second wave of media digital transformation.

Media in the middle: Media often gets lost between telecom disruption and technology sector innovation in providers’ TMT services.

Much of the conversation in the Telecom, Media, and Technology (TMT) space centers on helping telecom giants define their next chapter or enabling the shift from product to services in high-tech. Media so often fails to get a mention – and while there is a convergence and a blurring of lines across TMT – the media industry is also rapidly changing as the pandemic serves up the need for digital experiences on a silver platter. The smart enterprises and their service partners are on point. Proving this is the motivation for IBM’s move to meet the demand for digital experiences – its own survey finding that almost half of fans think that digital experiences have become more important since the pandemic (streaming, video content, highlights, statistics, and so on…). This figure rises to above 60% for Gen Z and Millennials.

The Bottom Line: The second wave of digital transformation in Media will be driven by experiences. The smart service providers will take note on how to best enable their clients.

Throughout the media space, various strands of AI are personalizing adverts and fueling news reports, video, and on-demand services that are emerging via mobile and at-home streams; entire enterprise business models are changing. Content creation is happening faster, subscription models are being optimized and becoming more flexible. Entertainment firms are innovating and trying to bring consumers new, increasingly digital, experiences. The demand for subscription-based services is booming and there seems to be another streaming service launched every day. Traditional media players are having to catch up to the likes of Netflix and Amazon; COVID has accelerated this – as the leading players just seem to “get” their customers.

There are providers taking advantage of the changing media landscape; others can’t let their media services, or their clients, fall by the wayside due to an over-focus on the telecom in TMT.