Data Driven: How Bundesliga Leverages AI to Engage a Global Fanbase | WIRED Brand Lab

[upbeat music] [crowd cheering]

[Luccas] You get attached to a club quite fast.

I remember the first time being

in a stadium with my dad.

It's like the story that everybody tells.

[Commentator] It suddenly opened up for Omar Marmoush!

[Luccas] AI is the transformative technology

that is going to enable us to provide

personalized content to millions

of Bundesliga fans worldwide.

There's no going back afterwards.

[Commentator] Oh, he's got everything!

[crowd cheering]

[calm music]

The Bundesliga is one

of the greatest football leagues in the world,

but there are millions of people out there

who are never able to attend

a Bundesliga game in the stadium.

And our ambition is to create an experience

which comes very, very close to that.

What we know from research

is people want to consume content

in their mother tongue.

So we need to create content

in all those languages.

At AWS, we start by looking

at a customer opportunity

and work backwards to see how best

to apply technology to address that need.

If you look at Bundesliga,

they have a very similar approach,

[crowd cheering]

fan centricity.

[Bastian] If you want to expand

into the next millions of new fans,

we need to think about how we could reach them.

With artificial intelligence,

machine learning, and generative AI,

we are able to create content

that is directly relevant to the fans.

The Bundesliga app is where we actually engage

with our fans in a one-to-one direction.

It's a home for Bundesliga content globally,

but personalized for every fan.

But you have to be real time

because you're competing with other entertainment outlets.

[calm music]

[Sri] In order to get going

with a generative AI capability,

you need a strong data foundation.

[Bastian] The whole process starts

with a data-capturing on the pitch

of tracking and event data.

[Elif] So every Bundesliga stadium has 16 to 20 cameras.

They are located all around the stadium.

We track the position of the player

and the ball position 25 times per second.

In total, we collect 3.6 million data points per game.

This data is then processed

into the Bundesliga data hub.

Which is now allowing us

to move much more rapidly

with innovations like the AI Live Ticker.

[intense music]

The AI Life Ticker

is a automated generative AI enabled life ticker solution.

So it tells you the game story

in multiple languages, styles,

and tones in real time

without a human in the loop.

[intense music continues]

To be the most fan centric league,

we know that we need to do things differently.

One example is in Latin America,

a commentator celebrating a goal

in a total different way.

We need to train those models

as if it were a Brazilian commentator

who commentated this game.

Otherwise, we will not be successful

and reach out to those people.

[crowd cheering]

[Commentator] Goal!

[Sri] Our next project brings forward advanced analytics

for commentators to use during live broadcast.

So we want to tell the best stories.

So data helps us to do that,

and that's where Commentary Live System really

comes into play.

So imagine you're a commentator

and you are trying to tell the story of a game.

Well, with Commentary Live System,

you've got everything at your fingertips.

When we combine these data points,

we started telling interesting stories.

[Commentator] Kevin Kampl against his former club!

[Commentator] That's bad defending

and that gets punished.

These are next generation statistics

that raise the bar in terms

of the understanding of the game

to tell a better story.

[markers beeping] [crowd cheering]

[Commentator] And even though heading

is not his specialty,

he's able to get this over the line.

[Commentator] Oh, it's brilliant!

[crowd cheering]

[playful music]

[wings flapping]

If I look back and see where we were

to where we are now with Bundesliga,

it is exciting.

But to be honest, it's just the beginning.

[Bastian] All this leads to more than 1 billion people

[crowd cheering]

watching per season.

[Sri] As generative AI capabilities continue to evolve,

we will iterate with Bundesliga

and bring new value and innovation to fans.

[logo banging]