There have been many brands that have used chat bots and Wimbledon is no exception they are next in the line-up.
Wimbledon has seen its mobile users increase tenfold, with visitors and viewers catching up and watching the matches through The Wimbledon app. “The Wimbledon app, meanwhile, was downloaded an additional 1.5 million times in 2016 as 21m unique devices accessed Wimbledon highlights (up from 21.1m in 2015) and its social media videos were viewed 106m times (up from 85m in 2015).” Stats credit Marketing Week.

They will be introducing the option of an AI assistant named Fred, after the legendary tennis player Fred Perry which is powered by IBM Watson technology. Fred will allow people who are at the ground to ask for directions and find out where restaurants are located. Alexandra Willis, head of communications, content & digital at the All English Lawn Tennis Club, says “the plan is to expand the AI assistant over the coming years so it can answer questions such as the history of players or whether it’s going to rain with a level of intuition similar to that of Siri.”

The Wimbledon tournament will also see them using more 360° videos and augmented reality technologies. They will be giving the practice courts a new lease of life, as the feedback from fans clearly stated their annoyance as they didn’t know who was training on the practice courts. So this technology will definitely help as it will show the lists of players on the practice court.

Willis further went onto say “The appetite for people wearing a VR headset for an entire match of tennis isn’t particularly high. We are waiting for the technology to evolve and catch up. But AR is very compelling as it can sit within the mobile experience and give somebody the freedom to cultivate their own experience during a match.”