Insights from Motasem El Bawab
During the sector’s digital transformation, recent years have seen sports properties adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning solutions into their digital experiences. From the use of homepage chatbots and instant messaging, to the personalization of non-live video content and the assessment of athlete performance, automation is already changing the way sports organizations communicate with their fans and stakeholders and isn’t an entirely new frontier.
Nevertheless, since the proliferation of public-facing, AI-powered products – including ChatGPT and Microsoft Outlook’s Copilot – such is the quality of machine learning software available on today’s market, the use of AI is diversifying and will dramatically shift how the sports industry, at large, studies things such as on-field performance and fan behavior.
The question now is how and when to adopt AI into one’s digital ecosystem; i.e. what is the primary purpose, and best use case, for utilizing AI into your business? Furthermore, how can it serve the customer’s experience (CX)? And how can sports properties industrialize the adoption of AI across the entire organization? Discussing the ubiquity of AI, our Chief Information Officer (CIO) Motasem El Bawab addresses these challenges in a recent article on AI adoption in sports.
“Now that large language models are becoming mainstream, they no longer require a heavy development effort to be integrated in your applications,” Mota says. “Whereas, in years gone by, organizations required a lot of processing power to be able to implement machine learning models into their digital framework – whereas, with the different cloud solutions available to sports properties, it’s becoming much easier to use them. AI-powered solutions can be applied and adapted to serve departments at every level of the organization.”
Looking to the year ahead, while the principle of AI is still to enhance the user experience (UX) – whether they be a customer, employee, athlete, or stakeholder – automated processes are now helping sports properties to access and analyze user data, as part of their digitalization.
- This extends to the personalization of the employee experience (EX) and helping teams manage large quantities of information with greater detail, accuracy, and speed. For example, as part of our partnership with the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), N3XT Sports is examining how AI solutions such as Microsoft’s Copilot can be integrated within the union’s modern technology stack.
- Meanwhile, AI-driven solutions can help reduce the time it takes to review internal documentation, an area N3XT Sports is looking at closely. N3XT Sports is launching a new AI solution called N3XTAI, with the assistance of Microsoft technology, which aims to make information more accessible to its users and documentation faster to process without having to make it public. “Presenting a secure application for analyzing public documents and information, N3XTAI can be integrated into any database or document-retrieval process and is customizable at any level of an organization,” Mota explains. “Used in this way, AI is creating a paradigm shift in how sports properties process data and information.”
- As part of N3XT Sports’ continued support of our clients’ digital transformation journeys, our team is exploring ways AI and machine learning models can be leveraged to grow audiences, too. For example, with the support of N3XT Sports, United World Wrestling (UWW), the governing body of Olympic wrestling, introduced AI-driven audience analytics to inform its digital marketing campaigns during the 2023 UWW World Championships (WCH23) and optimize the fan journey across its digital assets.
- Elsewhere, machine learning software is also helping major events organizers to manage their timetabling. By way of example, in January, the National Basketball Association (NBA), North America’s preeminent men’s basketball league, became the latest sports property to invest in the AI technology developer Fastbreak.ai, which will help the league optimize its competition schedule. Evan Wasch, the NBA’s Executive Vice President (EVP) of Basketball Strategy and Analytics, said the collaboration will provide a solution to “one of sport’s most complex processes”.
SPORTS ENTITY’S DATA MATURITY AMONG CHALLENGES FOR AI IMPLEMENTATION
As the role of AI becomes commonplace in the modern sports property’s front office, how the entity decides to implement machine learning tools is just as important as the solutions they choose to elect in the first place. While the benefits are abundant, there are several steps organizations should first take before coming to these decisions, so as to amplify their use of AI across the business, without impeding workflow.
These include: (1) how AI will serve the employee and improve internal workflows; (2) the scope for experimentation and trialing new AI-based use cases; and (3) whether your company’s data policy fits to a new AI-driven digital strategy.
The latter point is an important one since data disparity and data complexity are common symptoms of technology adoption, whenever the organization hasn’t taken the time to first assess how their digital applications impact dataflow. With data silos, it will be harder for AI to ask questions of the information available to the organization and therefore makes its findings less reliable. Consolidating siloed data sets and centralizing fan, athlete, and stakeholder data is therefore paramount for sports properties exploring use cases for AI and machine learning.
“In summary, organizations should first assess their digital and data maturity to discover where AI can prove most effective,” Mota says. “Although AI can be adapted to multiple tasks, it’s necessary that the business has some form of data strategy for AI to serve a purpose within the organization. Where data is non-uniform, it is much more difficult to extract meaningful and reliable insights from information using AI tools. N3XTAI is designed specifically to make this process more secure and data easier to find.
“The workforce is tasked with ingesting and analyzing a vast amount of information on a daily basis,” Mota continues, “whether through digitized documents or customer and stakeholder data – so it is vital that this information is easy to understand, accessible, and reliable. With the power of AI, N3XT Sports is serving its clients by helping assess their digital and data complexity, consolidating their information and data, and aligning the latest AI solutions to their individual requirements.”
WHAT’S N3XT?
No sports entities are entirely alike – whether in the makeup of their D2C strategy, how they build commercial partnerships, or the internal structure of their digital framework. As part of our scope of services – including N3XTAI – N3XT Sports offers a wide range of end-to-end, digital transformation solutions; from the assessment of one’s digital ecosystem and how they manage data, through to the implementation of bespoke digital strategies and technologies designed to optimize dataflow, reduce costs, and enhance the UX.
As sports entities explore the integration of AI-powered tools into their technology stacks, as with any new solution, it’s important to first understand how it will impact the property’s existing workflows, and how machine learning can truly benefit commercial growth and business acumen. At the center of the industry’s modernization – and the multiple roles AI provides sports organizations and rights holders – maximizing its capabilities requires a thorough understanding of one’s digital framework and to ensure that data is accessible, easy to retrieve, and always reliable.
“Our team provides solutions to your digital needs,” Mota expands, “including AI-drive solutions, such as N3XTAI, that make information and data more accessible for internal teams and much quicker to process. AI-driven applications should make information easier to find and understand, and must be customizable at every level of the business. While the sector continues to evolve, AI assistance will, no doubt, play a vital role in the future digitalization of the sports industry.”
Our team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and implement data and digital transformation strategies across a multitude of sports properties at federation level, competition level, and club level. To find out more about how N3XT Sports can serve your organization, fill out the form below, and we’ll be in touch. Our goal is to drive the digitalization of the sports industry and our clients.