AI and its Impact on the Sports Industry

Artificial Intelligence or ‘AI’ is one of the most talked about subjects in the world at the moment, with apparently endless applications. AI is writing our children’s school essays, helping organisations with their internal audits and has the potential to rule over humanity one day (if the doom-mongers are to be believed). But how will AI impact upon the sports and exercise industries, and what impact has it had already? Sport was one of the first areas to really pioneer the use of AI and elite athletes are subject to all sorts of data crunching aided with the help of yes, you’ve guessed it, AI. If you’ve seen the 2011 film Moneyball (based on the true story of an over performing baseball team) you’ll be familiar with how computer algorithms were used to determine the efficacy of players that were written off by coaches. This in essence heralded the start of AI in the sporting world and now you’d be hard placed to find a professional sports team that doesn’t utilise it. Elite sports teams in Europe and North America all fit their players with heart rate monitors that feed data back to central processing computers, telling the coaches and medical staff how fit, healthy and able a player is. Furthermore, a leading football coach will not just analyse opponents by watching videos of them playing, but he will receive AI generated briefs that will inform him of the probability of certain scenarios and how the opposing team’s players might perform given their recent form. AI is already highly embedded into sport and some commentators are predicating that adjudication and refereeing may be taken over by intelligent ‘robot’ referees in the future, as controversy over refereeing decisions continues to be prevalent across many sports. Experts are also predicting that fan engagement will also be heightened by AI as social media comments during a game will be analysed and information then generated as a result of those comments. Predictive analysis is just the start of sport’s AI journey and there will no doubt be numerous innovations in this space as the technology becomes better understood.