Infosys and Roland-Garros Empower Players, Fans and Media With New Digital Innovations on Court and at Home

By AIT News Desk On Sep 28, 2020

Infosys, a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, and the French Tennis Federation, announced the latest innovations set to hit the courts at this year’s Roland-Garros, as part of the second year of the strategic technology partnership.

Leveraging Infosys’ technology platform, this year’s tournament will deliver a digitally enhanced experience by facilitating virtual experiences and greater access for millions of fans, better training, and analysis among players and coaches, as well as storytelling support for journalists. Intense remote collaboration was required as a result of the ongoing pandemic, relying heavily on cloud-based services and an agile, innovative approach by both organisations.

One of the strategic objectives for the FFT was to cement itself as a leader in AI-based innovation in sport by integrating a number of specific solutions this year:

AI-powered analytics for fans in the Infosys Match Centre on RolandGarros.com and on the official app – Infosys will power the remote fan experience on the digital properties of the tournament bringing courtside to the fan’s homes in immersive ways. The redesigned Match Centre will provide tennis fans with innumerable ways of visualising a match. Fans can dive into MatchBeats for point-by-point play, stroke-summary to understand the go-to-strokes of players, rally-analysis to look at how tactics change, and CourtVision to understand serve, return, and rally based insights. The all-new user interface, brought together by Infosys digital design arm Brilliant Basics, aims to appeal to a broader range of fans by providing accessible and understandable match insights.
AI Coaching on the Roland-Garros Players App – New for 2020, Infosys is powering an all-new mobile and tablet app experience for coaches and players at Roland-Garros. Developed in collaboration with FFT’s players and coaches department, the app incorporates sophisticated and fast match analysis, rally replay, stroke analysis, and on-device video highlight editing and production capabilities — all powered by Infosys AI and enabled by a cloud-powered architecture. The result is near-instant match replay and assessment, enabling coaches to leverage data-driven insights and share tailored video summaries with players to support them on the court.
Insight-driven journalism and intelligent post-match highlights enabled by AI
- AI-assisted journalism which features tools for media, including simultaneous match analysis, natural language generation (NLG) based match synopsis, and integration across publishing platforms for easy embedding into reports. The feature pulls from large and varied data sets and develops intelligent narratives for FFT journalists to integrate into their articles. It also powers the automatic creation of graphics including stats, trends, charts, and brings together high-resolution player images to create ready-to-publish content.
- AI Highlights helps to create the perfect highlights for every match in a completely automated fashion, picking the most interesting, crucial and dramatic points by using various cues including player emotion, crowd noise, and match-context. All this within minutes of the completion of a game. The solution leverages cloud-based AI/ML services on audio, video, and statistical data of a match, to create and deliver powerful highlights across digital platforms.

Pravin Rao, Chief Operating Officer, Infosys, said, “2020 has introduced new challenges for how we consume sports and entertainment, and we’re excited that our partnership with Roland-Garros once again reinvents the digital landscape for fans, players and the media alike. From the all-new player app AI features to the enhanced Match Centre, we have leveraged powerful technologies and toolsets across the board to ensure fans, players, coaches have the best experience possible, wherever they are.”

Bernard Giudicelli, President of the French Tennis Federation, said, “It is an invaluable asset for Roland-Garros to be able to benefit from the expertise and innovative strength of a partner like Infosys. Their expertise in data processing will enable us to offer all our fans the opportunity to slip into the shoes of an expert for improved match analysis. With Infosys, we’re taking the spectator into a new experience, and a new dimension.”

The Roland-Garros Fan App and the Roland-Garros Players App are available to download from the respective app stores for Android and iOS devices. The tournament runs from 21^st September 2020 to 11^th October 2020.

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