La Liga expands Microsoft Azure partnership for OTT services and ML enhancements - Cloud Computing News

La Liga, the foremost Spanish football league, has expanded its partnership with Microsoft Azure to focus on machine learning (ML), over the top (OTT) services, as well as augmented reality. The two companies promise to'digitally transform the sports experience globally', and are focusing on improvements for fans, broadcasters and stadia operations alike. Azure Event Hubs and Azure Data Lake, as well as Azure's machine learning tools, will provide'data-enhanced match coverage' as well as personalised OTT streaming options, such as camera angle selection in matches. The integration between Azure and data and analytics platform Databricks will also be utilised; the latter completed the hyperscaler hat-trick, in football parlance, with Google Cloud integration back in February. The OTT platform, for broadcasters, will utilise Dynamics 365, Power BI and SQL, built on Azure, while Microsoft is also looking to leverage 5G technologies for'unified in-stadium experiences.'