Fox Sports taps IBM Watson for AI-infused Women’s World Cup coverage

Fox Sports has tapped IBM Watson to use AI for analysis of its coverage of the Women’s World Cup football tournament in France.

Fox Sports has introduced a new broadcast segment called Player Spotlight Built with IBM Watson. The AI-backed tool is designed to help generate statistical analysis for match commentary using a natural language interface.

Watson AI technology is used to analyse game footage, further enabling Fox Sports to enhance viewer engagement. Player Spotlight ingests detailed tournament data from Opta, a data provider that collects and analyses passes, goals and penalty kicks in near real-time, enabling commentators to interact with the tool by entering queries into the navigation function, which in turn surfaces highlights, data and analytics that the broadcasters can reference on-air.

“IBM’s AI and live-streaming technology has helped transform our production of key events like the Women’s World CupWe look forward to leveraging the advancements in IBM technology to offer fans a comprehensive World Cup experience,” said Zac Fields, Fox Sports SVP graphic tech/integration. “

Fox Sports is also using IBM Aspera’s live-streaming technology for its Women’s World Cup live streaming coverage. According to IBM, by offering editors in Los Angeles access to HD camera feeds from France within 10 seconds of live play, Fox Sports can avoid deploying equipment overseas.

In total, it’s estimated that roughly four to six petabytes of content will be streamed over the course of the tournament, more than double that of the 2018 Men’s World Cup.