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AI and an augmented reality Andy Murray keep fans connected to Wimbledon

Tournament is again working with IBM Watson on creating personalised highlights

With the return of grass court tennis at Wimbledon for the first time in two years, this year’s event is employing technology to help it reach fans who can’t be there in person.

The Championships are running at 50 per cent capacity, building up to full crowds on Centre Court for the finals. As always, the BBC has the exclusive TV rights in the UK.

As in previous tournaments, Wimbledon has partnered with IBM Watson to extend fan experiences for this year’s tournament, including IBM Power Rankings with Watson, an AI-powered analysis of player performance presented as a leaderboard, that updates every day of the tournament.

IBM Power Ranking analyses both structured and unstructured data via an AI model that was built using IBM Watson Studio for Cloud Pak for Data.

AI is also being employed to create personalised highlights of particular players for fans who register on the official Wimbledon app.

Wimbledon’s IBM-powered digital experience uses a combination of on-premises systems, private clouds, and IBM Cloud. Several of the features in the Wimbledon digital experience are built as containerised apps and deployed on Red Hat OpenShift which allows them to run them across hybrid cloud environments.

Meanwhile, Wimbledon partner American Express has created an augmented reality version of two-time champion Andy Murray for its Champions Rally game.

The AR experience can be played on mobile, and lets tennis fans hit targets positioned over a net to measure their speed and accuracy, in an environment that replicates Centre Court.