Spanish football league partners with Microsoft to provide personalised services to supporters
Toby Ingleton |
LaLiga – the top professional football league in Spain – is partnering with Microsoft to help harness the potential of artificial intelligence and the cloud in order to deliver personalised experiences for fans.
With almost 1,000 games taking place each season, LaLiga matches are broadcast to an audience of 2.1 billion people every year.
The league also has a large and growing social media community of around 1.8 billion followers – the majority of which use digital technologies every day.
Interacting with fans and meeting their needs in ways that are familiar to them is now a priority for LaLiga.
“The recent growth in digital technologies has changed the relationship with the fans,” said Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga. “The fans want a lot more today. They want to know their clubs and their heroes through social networks. But they now demand information seven days a week. They want to know what happens in between games.”
By harnessing artificial intelligence and cloud services, LaLiga’s leaders able to deliver personalised fan interactions, allowing supporters to access the most applicable content to them. By tapping into fans preferences, relevant videos and statistics can be delivered via a variety of digital channels, and ultimately, the user experience can be enhanced.
“We don’t want to overwhelm them with unnecessary information,” Telas explained. “Microsoft brings us knowledge, social listening, business intelligence. This allows us to focus on sending the information that the fan really desires.”
In the highly competitive world of professional football, any advantage that can be gained over an opposition will be used if possible. According to Tebas, the growth of digital technologies is starting to have a radical effect on the field of play, with more data now able to be collected and analysed on elements of each player and each match.
“I believe that there is still a true digital revolution in the area of game strategy,” said Telas. “Physical development and the health of the players is very important. Analysing player resilience, speed and capacity during a game will give us a huge amount of information for the trainers, coaches, doctors, and sports directors.”
With football being such an important part of Spanish culture, Telas adds that this use of technology will ensure the sport’s popularity going forward.
“It’s clear that the predictive aspect and business intelligence offers a synergy that is important for our future,” he said.