JOHANNESBURG, South Africa—Live sports remains one of the most watched elements of live television, but that doesn’t mean that the experience still can’t be improved upon. According to a new report from research and development company NTT around 54% of viewers are not fully satisfied with sports viewing experiences, but they also say that a solution could be found in the form of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
One area of interest for the use of AI in sporting events is for predicting outcomes. More than half of survey respondents age 18-34 (54%) think AI is capable of successfully predicting the results of a sporting event, with nearly the same amount (52%) suggesting that accurate predictions would make a sporting event more engaging. However, across all ages, only 26% of respondents were aware of AI or machine learning technology being used for sporting events.
Additional findings from the NTT report reveal that 56% of millennials (18-34) said they expect to increase their use of “second screens” during live sporting events over the next three years. Across all age groups, 51% of respondents are tracking live updates of sporting events through a second screen at least once a week. A key motivator for including a second screen experience, according to 34% of participants, is for greater access to data and stats.
“It’s clear ICT infrastructure, the cloud and mobile services have a critical role to play as the sport industry evolves to meet the growing demands of digitally savy supporters,” said NTT in its announcement.
