AI quickly became a fixture in the sports world, from electronic telephones for tennis to robot referees for baseball to automatic judges for snowboards. But in the Premier League, the most popular football league in the world, the focus of AI is not on hosting or gameplay, but on enhancing the fans’ experience.
Earlier this month, the Premier League announced a new partnership with Microsoft and Adobe to integrate AI tools on its digital platform. These collaborations will introduce a range of generation technologies, including virtual assistants and AI agents, allowing fans to interact with real-time and historically matched data. A major focus is to revamp the popular fantasy Premier League.
Early results suggest that these digital upgrades are resonating. The alliance has already had 1.8 billion global followers worldwide over the past three weeks, accounting for 20% to 30% of digital platform participation. When the fantasy Premier League this season kicked off on July 21, more than one million users registered within 24 hours, a significant increase of 700,000 in the same period last year.
“Our role is to create value for our club by interacting as many fans as possible and bringing them into the Premier League ecosystem,” Premier League chief business officer Will Brass said in a statement. “Ultimately, a big part of that is making sure our channels are best able to interact with these fans and more importantly, delivering what they want to fans.”
According to the Premier League, fans are increasingly looking for quick, clever answers to questions: “What are the five best goals ever?” or “How many times has my club been relegated?” As part of a new five-year partnership with Microsoft, the Premier League peers are easily answered, which is the AI assistant, which has taken its output from over 30 statistics seasons, 300,000 articles and 9,000 videos. AI Assistant is available through the Premier League’s official app and web platform and will eventually support open-ended questions as well as text and audio translation.
Microsoft’s role is beyond its companions. Its AI system will also power features in the Fantasy Premier League and provide players with tactical guidance and team management support. Meanwhile, a separate collaboration with Adobe brings fan creativity to the forefront: Fantasy team managers can now design custom suites and badges using AI tools and receive personalized emails such as performance updates sent by Adobe’s own digital proxy.
While these tools enhance the fan experience, the partnership is also designed to simplify the internal operations of the alliance. The Premier League moved its core infrastructure to Microsoft Azure to increase the efficiency of the department. As far as Adobe is concerned, Adobe will help the affiliate’s marketing teams personalize outreach using AI models and track fan engagement through improved analytical methods provided by specialized agencies.
The Premier League is not alone in embracing AI to reshape the fans’ experience. Spain’s La Liga signed a similar deal with Microsoft earlier this year to provide advanced game analysis. Outside football, Wimbledon teamed up with IBM, in June to launch an AI assistant to answer fan questions, while the NFL expanded Adobe Partnership in April to include the AI-Drive-Driendent Content Content creation.
