The continuing advancement of artificial intelligence remains a constant throughout the various sectors of the sports industry.
Being open to working with AI was one of the messages given to students Tuesday during Bradley University’s annual Charley Steiner Sports Symposium.
“I don’t know if I look at it as ‘the have and the have nots,’ as much as I look at it as the ‘willings and the unwillings,’” said Mike Taylor, co-founder of the sports technology company Agdiago. “Those that don’t get on board are going to get left behind quicker, and that gap is changing daily. So if you’re not getting on board with it now, you’re making your own gaps.”
Taylor was joined on the symposium’s panel discussion on AI in sports by St. Louis Cardinals lead data scientist Alan Kessler and Andrew Young, an Auburn University lecturer who played a role in launching the Big Ten and SEC cable networks.
“AI has probably changed just since we started talking. They’ve probably made adjustments that we have to be on top of,” said Joshua Dickhaus, director of the Steiner School of Sports Communication, who moderated the panel.
“People are using it for training methods on the likes and wants of the players, the best way to train them, the best way to coach them, when a player is likely to get hurt. It’s helping evolve the fan experience.”
Bradley’s eighth Steiner Symposium marked 10 years of hosting the event, after two were postponed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other panel discussions Tuesday discussed sports betting, globalization, and Steiner School success stories.
“We’ve now been around long enough that we have graduates out there who have ascended into positions of authority and responsibility, and they’re very successful,” said Paul Gullifor, professor of sports communication.
“It’s gratifying for me, because I had most of them in class. They come home, and it’s great to hear their success stories and they have a lot of them. We thought it’d be great to put them on a panel so that they can inspire our current students, to show them that you come through this program, you can make it, and you can make a difference.”
With his background in sports broadcasting, Young touched on the benefits of using AI to assist with live event presentations.
“It’s another tool in your toolbox which helps you prepare, and you can simulate certain situations or process, ‘How is this going to work when I get into real time?’ — because it’s hard to simulate a live event,” said Young. “Using these extra tools that can help you simulate, that helps you greatly to prepare for what you might see or what you could see because it’s all about instincts. In that moment, you have two seconds, three seconds, to decide what to do.”
Kessler said in baseball, there are countless applications for AI, ranging from scouting opposing players and potential draft picks to assisting with in-game situations.
“There’s a ton of meat on the bone around computer vision. Can you assess where everyone is standing on a baseball field? Can you identify how fast their legs are moving, how fast their arms are rotating, and so forth? So that’s the kind of data that MLB provides us and all the other teams for every play and for every second of that play,” said Kessler.
“One of the things we can do with that data is try to identify where should players stand on the field with the best chance of making a play. So you might see players pull a card out of their pocket, and they know in this matchup, in this situation, that they should stand two steps in and a step to the right.”
Fan experience
Another aspect of sports where AI is having an increasing impact is in fan experience. Young pointed out that’s two different things when discussing fans attending events and fans watching the broadcasts.
“When we’re talking about fantasy sports and using these stats, this data, it can be tricky sometimes, because there’s more secretive things that coaches maybe don’t want out, or they don’t want the public to know,” said Young.
“You expect to know all the little details when you’re sitting in the stadium, which is why we have these LED boards all around stadiums to help [match] the experience that you might be getting at home — because you’re competing with the home on the television side and the in the in-stadium side. They’re both making money for the teams, but they’re competing with each other.”
Taylor said the key to using AI appropriately in enhancing the fan experience is to make it take on a second meaning: “authentic interaction.”
“I had somebody tell me when I first started out in sports — which obviously was a long time ago — and he said the best job in sports is that of the fan because when you’re in sports, you’re really down in deep with your with your teams and you’re not really cheering,” said Taylor, noting the ways AI is able to provide analysis on players and use the data points to calculate probable outcomes.
“I think that kind of fan experience with AI is going to grow. But that’s the tough part about that question, is in three months from now, my answer would probably be completely different because that’s how fast this whole landscape is changing.”
Dickhaus said he doesn’t think the emergence of AI will result in a shrinking number of jobs available in sports communication.
“It’s a tool, right?, and it’s something that organizations, universities and networks will use. But it’ll never replace the human element,” he said. “You’ll still need human beings to call and comment on the game. You still will need people to do the camera work and to write about it. But it’s definitely a very fast-emerging tool that can be used.”