FLUSHING, N.Y., Aug. 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE:
IBM), the digital partner of the US Open, announced today new fan
experiences leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and hybrid
cloud to empower millions of fans around the world with player and
match insights so they can experience the iconic tennis Grand Slam
in new ways.
Experience the interactive Multichannel News Release here:
https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8668658-ibm-usta-power-rankings-with-watson-2021-us-open/
Innovating the Fan Experience
IBM is helping to enhance the US Open digital experience by
using AI to keep fans more informed about the players and matches
with real-time rankings and insights on the US Open app and
USOpen.org. The tournament's new IBM Power Rankings with
Watson and Match Insights
with Watson run on IBM Cloud
with Red Hat OpenShift, and use AI and natural language processing
(NLP) to analyze data and offer key insights ahead of each of the
tournament's 254 singles matches. IBM Power Rankings with
Watson and Match Insights with
Watson will also be integrated
into the tournament broadcast on ESPN, and in the United States Tennis Association's (USTA),
daily show, "The Changeover."
- IBM Power Rankings with Watson: Launched at the 2021 Wimbledon
Championship, IBM Power Rankings with Watson are AI-powered daily rankings of
player momentum that will be used at the US Open for the first time
this year. The typical tennis tour ranking systems use 52 weeks of
historical data to quantify player performance. IBM Power Rankings
takes this further by focusing on a player's most recent history.
It combines advanced statistical analysis, Watson Discovery's NLP
capabilities and the secured and open IBM Cloud to analyze player
performance data; mine media commentary; measure player momentum;
and, highlight it's determination of the most compelling matchups.
The IBM Power Rankings Leaderboard will be first posted on the
Friday before the tournament, and then will be updated daily during
the tournament.
- Match Insights with Watson: Match Insights with Watson uses Watson Discovery to create
AI-generated fact sheets to help fans quickly get up to speed ahead
of every singles match during the tournament. First launched in
2020, Match Insights with Watson is enhanced with updated features
including "In the Media," to extract key insights about each player
from news sources, and "By the Numbers," which uses natural
language generation (NLG) to translate historical statistics into
sentences and then uses IBM Decision Optimization for Watson Studio
to help select which insights to display to fans.
- New Features: IBM Power Rankings and Match Insights can
also help fans better understand what the data is saying about
players ahead of upcoming matches with new features including
"Likelihood to Win," "Ones to Watch," and "Upset Alerts":
-
- Likelihood to Win (L2W): A confidence value, expressed
in percentages, assigned to each singles match player toward the
likelihood that they will win the match.
- Ones to Watch: A pre-tournament perspective of
players where the IBM Power Ranking is five or more positions
higher than their respective tour rank.
-
- Notably, Ones to Watch was tested earlier this year during
Wimbledon. Using IBM Watson, the solution identified Matteo Berrettini as a One to Watch, and he made
the tournament's final.
- Upset Alerts: Matches identified as "Upset Alerts"
are when the IBM Power Rankings favor an underdog, as defined by
the tour ranks, to win based on a higher L2W.
The work that IBM does with the USTA for the US Open --
including digital fan experiences, cyber security, digital property
support and more -- is built on a hybrid cloud infrastructure that
includes IBM Cloud, Watson for
Cyber Security, and IBM Watson's enterprise-grade AI capabilities.
These are the same technologies IBM is using to digitally transform
clients in a variety of industries around the world.
US Open Fantasy Tennis
New this year, the US Open is also launching US Open Fantasy
Tennis on USOpen.org, which will include IBM Power Rankings and
insights using IBM Watson Discovery. US Open Fantasy Tennis, the
first-ever fantasy experience for this tennis Grand Slam, gives
sports fans the opportunity to create a fantasy team of tennis pros
that they can follow throughout the two-week tournament. US Open
Fantasy Tennis will be enriched with Match Insights to help users
make the most informed fantasy selections for their teams. Match
Insights will be available within the US Open Fantasy Tennis
interface to help users select a fantasy roster of four men and
four women. The data from IBM Power Rankings and Match Insights
will change throughout the tournament, giving users a chance to
reevaluate their roster during the pre-determined redemption
period, before the fourth round of the tournament. In the
game, US Open Fantasy players will receive points every time their
selected tennis players win a match (100 pts), serve an ace (two
pts each), and break a serve (five pts each).
Engaging Fans Around the World
"Our partnership with IBM enables us to offer advanced
data-driven insights to millions of fans worldwide watching or
attending the tournament," said Kirsten
Corio, Managing Director, Ticketing, Hospitality and Digital
Strategy, USTA. "Behind the scenes, IBM Cloud allows us to have the
flexibility and security to power our remote operations, innovate
new features year over year, and ensure that the US Open Digital
Properties run flawlessly to deliver the tournament to the
world."
A recent IBM Institute for Business Value survey1 of
over 2,600 US adults highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic has
significantly changed consumer preferences of the fan experience
during sports. Two times more US adults surveyed report watching
traditional sports on digital platforms during the pandemic (84%)
compared to pre-pandemic (41%), and 60% of US adults surveyed
reported technologies like AI and cloud computing make sports more
engaging to watch for fans.
"Since last year's entirely virtual tournament we've learned
even more about what fans are looking for and how technology can
help execute a tournament of this scale," said Noah Syken, Vice President of Sports &
Entertainment Partnerships, IBM. "We're excited to bring that
insight into our continued partnership with the USTA, and to help
leverage our AI and cloud expertise to make the tournament more
engaging for fans via the digital platforms and their new fan
experiences, and the behind-the-scenes technology that helps enable
the tournament."
Driven by the Hybrid Cloud
For 30 years, IBM has been the Official Technology Partner of
the US Open. IBM designs and develops the US Open app and website,
including fan experiences that help engage with fans globally
throughout the tournament. Similar to previous years, the US Open's
digital properties run on a combination of on-premises, public, and
private clouds, and pull from a variety of data sources and APIs.
IBM uses this hybrid cloud approach to collect, integrate, and
distribute data and applications across multiple clouds while
seamlessly handling a variety of different workloads. This year's
innovative solutions were built on IBM Cloud, and containerized
using Red Hat OpenShift. The flexibility of the cloud allows for
rapid innovation each year, as the IBM developers building these
solutions are able to write code for new features once, and deploy
them in the many USTA environments.
As experiences have increasingly shifted online during the
pandemic, a hybrid cloud architecture gave the US Open's digital
operation the flexibility it needed for ongoing remote work while
maintaining productivity and certified to the highest commercial
level of data security2. Due to the ongoing pandemic and
lessons learned from the 2020 US Open, the tournament's digital and
content teams are operating with a combination of on and off-site
team members. A hybrid cloud architecture enables remote operations
to function with resiliency, scalability and speed.
The 2021 US Open runs from August 30
through September 12. To see the technology in action,
including the daily updated IBM Power Rankings, visit USOpen.org,
or on your mobile device via the US Open app, available in the
Apple and Android app stores.
CONTACT:
Zoë Hoffmann
zoe.hoffmann@ibm.com
Red Hat, the Red Hat logo, and OpenShift are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the
U.S. and other countries.
1 IBM Institute of Business Value Sports and
Tech Survey: Survey responses from 2,600 US Adults. August 202.
2 The Federal Information Processing Standard
(FIPS) Publication 140-2 is a U.S. government computer security
standard used to approve cryptographic modules. It is issued by the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Level 4 is
the highest level of commercial security.
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SOURCE IBM