Fox Sports Teams With IBM Watson to Use Artificial Intelligence for FIFA World Cup

Fox Sports has tapped into the potential of artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver the innovative FIFA World Cup Highlight Machine, available through its Fox Sports App and FoxSports.com. A collaboration with IBM, the Highlight Machine is enabled by the IBM Watson computer technology. It analyzes video from the FIFA World Cup archive, as well as 2018 footage, and extracts data, allowing users to search for goals, red cards, players by name and the like. It is about creating a "compelling user experience around highlights, not just in 2018 but also previously, at leat 50 years," says David Mowrey, head of product and development at IBM Watson Media. More typically, gathering this sort of data would be a task done manually by employees, but considering the scope of the World Cup, that would be impractical, and arguably impossible, Mowrey explains, because of the enormous volume of video that is involved.