Webinar: How AI Can Boost Fan Engagement in Sports Video

Few things have driven the growth of sports quite like bite-sized video content. 

From highlight clips distributed in real-time across all digital and social platforms, to instant-classic key moments getting massive traction, breaking hours-long games down into their most high-impact pieces has become a cornerstone of any great sports content provider. Now, teams, leagues and broadcasters are using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to identify, produce and share this content more seamlessly than ever.

In our latest virtual event, How AI Can Boost Fan Engagement in Sports Video, Front Office Sports sits down with thought leaders in the emerging sports media space: Ashwin Limaye, Chief Product Officer at Magnifi, Justin D’Apolito, Senior Manager of Social Content at the NBA, and Andrew Meyer, Managing Producer at the Buffalo Bills, to discuss:

Front Office Sports sat down with Justin D’Apolito, Senior Manager of Social Content at the NBA, Andrew Meyer, Managing Producer at the Buffalo Bills, and Ashwin Limaye, Chief Product Officer at VideoVerse, to discuss the emerging AI space and how this technology can help sports content producers boost fan engagement in sports video.

On the challenges sports organizations face from a content production standpoint (5:00)

Andrew: “For the first time in basically an entire generation for Bills fans, we’re in the national spotlight in a successful manner. So now we’re trying to leverage that national spotlight in any capacity, whether that’s on social or our digital platforms, specifically how can we leverage our time in the national spotlight with a successful team, with superstars and personalities for the first time, in a way that we can create new fans. How can we now become more of a national brand and eventually even more of a global entity, so leveraging these digital platforms and utilizing highlights and these big plays from our superstar players…how can we turn those into real-time engagement, and thus create new fans. So that’s the challenge for us this season.”

On using AI technology to create personalized content for the consumer in real time (13:15)

Ashwin: “Personalization requires one to understand two things. One, the person – who is the fan and what do they want to see? And the other side is the content, so we can match the right content to the fan. While AI can more broadly help with both of these, increasingly we’re seeing that building an in-depth understanding of the game becomes more and more important. For example, if we wanted to get super personalized and super nuanced, you may not express these things in your words but your viewing habits will tell it to us – us being the machine. The AI can figure this out when the game is happening, so the personalization kicks in saying, “we have this moment, it has these tags on it, this many meet the requirements…” and we can shoot the clip off to the consumer. If you are only going to have a few notifications for each game, this allows you to personalize this content accordingly.”

On where AI technology in sports video production is heading and what the future holds (32:20)

Justin: “I think we’re already trending towards my prediction, which is just deeper personalization. In my work in social content, we can make storylines matter, we can identify, highlight and showcase the storylines that matter, but when you take it a level deeper, I think you can also meet fans where they are in their level of fandom. We have core fans and that could mean surfacing more specific verticals like betting or things that interest them like stats. We also have casual fans, who want to consume the lifestyle content and things that are outside our game but are still a part of it as well. I think as the technology evolves, creativity evolves and the platform technology can evolve – like AR and VR, how people consume content will continue to change, and AI technology will continue to evolve alongside it.”