The Super Bowl is a multi-day experience. Fans attending this year’s game, to take place Sunday, Feb. 12 in Glendale, Ariz., have to plan travel, lodging, food and events in addition to buying tickets for the game itself.
3 Ways AI Can Enhance the Super Bowl
1. Help fans plan their game-weekend experience via a mobile planning app.
2. Engage more with the game, via interaction with other fans and even players.
3. Educate fans on game strategies.
Last year’s spectacle, held in Los Angeles, hosted more than 100,000 fans from all across the globe, making it one of the most-watched sporting events in the world as well as one that cities vie to host. Los Angeles’ economy stood to gain between $234.32 million and $477.5 million during Super Bowl weekend, according to GOBankingRates.
As stadiums increase their capacity for fans and cities prepare to host these events, technology continues to play a crucial role in all aspects of the experience.
An important technology that is making headlines for its innovative use cases is artificial intelligence, which many believe will proliferate as more funding and players get involved. Here’s how.
Planning the Experience
Ten years from now, or perhaps sooner, one of the ways we expect to see artificial intelligence deployed is as a personal assistant. Just as many people hire an authorized Disney Planner to make the most out of their Magic Kingdom experience, this Super Bowl Planner will be available as a mobile app.
The Super Bowl is no longer just a sporting event. So much more happens around the stadium than just the game itself. Much like a vacation, it’s key to have an itinerary. The Super Bowl planner will be able to help fans determine everything from what hotel will best accommodate their needs to how close it is to the stadium, identify what attractions are around the venue and start preparing the itinerary.
If this type of planner had been available during last year’s Super Bowl in Southern California, visitors could have been introduced to other attractions such as Santa Catalina Island, Sequoia National Park, Anaheim and more, simply based on information the assistant would have had on the user’s specific interests, tastes and preferences. Today, the use cases for AI are limited by the accessible data and functions.
Through the Super Bowl planner of the future, the assistant will be able to ask questions instead of just answering them. They will take into account the fan’s priorities and organize the most efficient way to achieve all of them. The Super Bowl Planner will stick with fans through their entire trip, not just until the itinerary is set.
The Super Bowl of the future will enable this Super Bowl Planner to support fans through their entire journeys, make adjustments and provide help along the way. This might include making reservations, providing directions, offering modes of transportation and suggesting other options if certain attractions are closed, etc. It will also make purchases easy and seamless, ensuring the experience is optimized at all times.
The assistant will be provided by the Super Bowl so all the data will stream back to help the event understand the nuanced decision-making that goes into experience management. Technology today is constantly taking context into account as questions become more complex and deserve a thorough answer.
Fan Engagement
Another way technology will transform the Super Bowl is through personalized fan engagement. This encompasses watching the actual game and becoming part of it through mobile devices. This can be achieved by pulling up replays in real time, tapping into new perspectives of players on the field and interacting with other fans and even players.
The Super Bowl of the future will need to meet fans where they are, which revolves around the mobile device. Delivering critical information on players during the game, whether that be statistics, injury updates and/or their presence on social media, brings us that much closer to the teams playing and the plays unfolding around them.
AI is making its way into this space with the integration of real-time prediction analytics on play-by-play formations, success rates and players on the field, which creates a more statistically immersive experience.
We saw glimpses of this in the regular season with Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football, which used AI-driven features to follow the ball carrier throughout plays and deliver real-time information to help contextualize every second of the game. Teams and coaches rely on this information for fourth-down situations, field goal opportunities and more.
Fan Education
Future uses of this technology will not only bring the fan closer to the sport, but educate them on different ways the team approaches game situations. The implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning will also provide stronger equity across refereeing these high-stakes games. It will also give the broadcast booth more information to tell the story with greater color and clarity. This is only the start of the use cases for artificial intelligence’s place in the game.
The use of AI and other technologies ensures the entire experience from start to finish is seamless, intuitive, and tailored to the interests that are most important to the fan. Fan engagement technologies will also play a pivotal role including real-time features and breakdowns to keep them engaged with the teams they enjoy watching.
With a stronger adoption of artificial intelligence and the extraction of data, the Super Bowl of the future will reap the benefits of its use cases and be able to deliver an experience unlike any other.
