The United States Tennis Association makes over 90 percent of its revenue from the US Open, and digital plays a fundamental role helping them grow financially, reach new audiences and engage fans.
Cloud
The cloud is revolutionizing IT environments at every company, in every industry. According to Forbes 80 percent of all IT budgets will be committed to cloud-based apps and solutions, and in just the last year, hybrid cloud adoption increased three-fold, from 19 percent of enterprises to nearly 60 percent.
Some adopt cloud for its cost. Some for its flexibility. And some, like the US Open, use cloud because it scales so quickly. The US Open runs a relatively small organization that requires very little cloud capacity for most the year. Then one day in late August its needs change dramatically. The number of end users increases by more than 1,000 percent, and the number of page views jumps over 5,000 percent.
The IBM Cloud is the heart of the US Open digital operations. That includes everything that comes off the court. Every score change, stat, ball position and serve speed. We can access data with other curated data sources from Twitter, The Weather Company, and more. During the two weeks of the US Open last year there were over 11 million unique users, who visited over 42 million times and viewed over 300 million pages of content across all the US Open digital platforms.
Cyber Security
In four years, the damage caused by cybercrime will exceed $6 trillion a year. Over the course of the tournament, it’s not unusual for the US Open network to be on the receiving end of more than 100 million attacks. Watson for Cyber Security can mine unstructured data from 75,000 documented software vulnerabilities, 10,000 annual security research papers, and 60,000 monthly security blogs. It has already ingested more than 1 million security documents.
Cognitive Concierge
Customer service is an $85 billion market. Service representatives are the front line between a company and its customers. And it can make or break the customer experience. Same goes for the US Open. This is a big, complex event. More than 700,000 visitors. 18 courts. Hundreds of matches. Dozens of food, drink, and shopping options.
Fans want to navigate the venue seamlessly, and the USTA wants customers to be able to find what they want. Using natural language, fans can ask Watson where to park, what time the match is, or where to find food and drinks.
Cognitive Highlights
At the US Open, there are as many as 18 matches going on at one time, seven of which have video coverage. The video streams alone could fill a small data center. It would take an army of people to produce highlights from this vast expanse of unstructured data. The system uses data and an analytic model to determine “candidate points” for analysis. Once the individual shot highlights for the match are determined, the system uses meta-data from the match to generate the graphics to facilitate the storytelling. These highlights will be shared on the US Open Official platforms, Facebook, and will be sent as push notifications for favorited players.
SlamTracker
The world is awash in data. 2.5 exabytes (quintillion) of it are produced every day. That’s the equivalent of 250,000 libraries of congress or 90 years of HD video.
Slamtracker gives fans an unprecedented level of analysis, insight and engagement as the match unfolds. It can tell you who is landing their first serve. How fast the returns are. And how deep a player is driving the ball to the baseline. It can even predict what it will take for a player to increase his or her chances to win the match. This year the Keys to the Match analytics were updated to include ball position and player location data. More tactical in nature, the keys include things like pace-of-play, serve placement spread or baseline proximity. Additional insights are generated based on “pressure situations” within a match.
These insights will show the historical performance for a player in the given “situation,” revealing hidden patterns in player and match dynamics. Twitter conversation is also monitored for sentiment so we can see if the players are winning in social as well as on the court.
Watson Media
Media and marketing organizations deal in almost exclusively unstructured information. In fact, it is estimated that 80 percent of the digital information in the world is unstructured.
Watson Media is a brand-new member of the US Open family of solutions. It’s a suite of Watson services designed exclusively for the small team of editors and producers that publish content to the US Open digital platforms. Watson was trained on player names and tennis terminology. As a result, Watson can automatically subtitle and transcribe video-on-demand content, making it more accessible for fans and saving time for digital editors.
US Open Digital Platforms
Last year there were more than 16 million content updates and 25 billion scoring updates to the US Open digital platforms during the two-week tournament. It is critical to understand that technology is at the core of the matches you are enjoying this week.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.