Since introducing WSC Sports’ technology to create highlights and recaps for its VOD service, WOWOW On Demand, the number of views and amount of viewers consuming the content has increased significantly.
Why did WOWOW start using this cutting-edge technology, and what have been the results? Half-time Media, a business platform catering to the sports industry in Japan, spoke to both companies about their business partnership and what the future holds for AI in the sports industry. This interview has been translated from the original Japanese.
30 Years of Dedication to Sports
Besides the World Cup, football’s most competitive tournament is the UEFA European Championship—a must-see event for Japanese football fans. One week before kickoff, WOWOW announced that it would broadcast all 51 matches marking the 8th consecutive time it broadcasted the event.
Since its launch, WOWOW has had a focus on broadcasting live sports, starting with Serie A football games in 1991, followed by coverage of several tennis Grand Slam tournaments in 1992. Over the years, coverage expanded to include LALIGA matches and UEFA Champions League—bringing the world’s best football to Japan. In addition to football and tennis, WOWOW also covers LPGA Tour tournaments, which features special coverage and reporting on the Japanese players.
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The Challenge: Creating Real-Time Content
As technology has evolved over the decades and fan behavior has changed along with it, new challenges arise. WOWOW’s Shota Mieno, explained:
Video distribution on the Internet and viewing highlights has become much more important, especially for younger generations of fans who value viewing the content immediately, while the games are played.”
“We saw a challenge in meeting the demand for real-time content that’s now become the standard for sports fans all over the world,” he continued. In the past, highlights were created manually, and it took a long time to distribute them. At the earliest, they would be released one day later. “Once a day passed, interest from the fans already moved on to the next thing. Getting content out to fans faster was key to winning the battle for attention,” Mieno said.
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Results Achieved with WSC Sports
To speed up content production and distribution, WOWOW introduced the WSC Sports platform to help automate their processes.
The AI analyzes full-match footage from live games, or archived games. Every play is automatically cut into short clips, and also indexed into a library with information like player names and types of plays. You can set up what kind of content you want to create in the system, and then the platform will produce it automatically for you.”
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Since using WSC Sports, there have been three noticeable results. The first is the significant improvement in the usability of WOWOW On Demand. Having all game recaps and highlights in one place helps users discover the content, and there has been a huge increase in the amount of people viewing the videos. Secondly, WOWOW has closed the gap in the amount of time it takes to get highlights out to fans. Previously, they would need to wait all day to watch highlights from last night’s match—whereas now, highlights are created the same night and posted in time for fans to enjoy on their morning commute to work or school. Lastly, WOWOW customers are now enjoying a wider variety of content like goal compilations, or highlights of Japanese players, in addition to traditional highlights.
The impact of the platform is reflected in the following numbers:
Unique users watching highlights increased 74% compared to before using WSC Sports. The overall number of unique users consuming football content went up 17%, mainly among younger fans. It was also found that videos that were automated with the help of WSC’s AI were played about 30 times more on average compared to videos that were manually edited and published one day later.
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Furthermore, because the highlight videos are shared so quickly to social media, the number of social media followers has also increased. On WOWOW’s X account for football content, the number of followers has increased an astounding 33%.
WOWOW is also using content created by WSC Sports to direct fans to WOWOW On Demand. Live highlights and game recaps are shared to Google OneBox, at the top of Google search, and feature a CTA button that leads users to WOWOW OnDemand to watch the live stream or recap, respectively.
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Another key win from using the WSC Sports platform has been optimizing internal resources. By automating highlight production, WOWOW significantly reduced costs compared to doing everything manually. Letting AI handle the monotonous task of video editing has freed up WOWOW’s internal resources to work on more creative tasks like coming up with content ideas to increase user satisfaction and improve the overall quality of their service.
The Importance of Quality and Speed
Ryosuke Ito, who is in charge of WOWOW On Demand products and was responsible for implementing WSC Sports, recalls seeing the first highlights created with WSC Sports.
It was amazing because it neatly organized all of the best clips from the match that I would have used anyways if I was working on the stream manually.”
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Onboarding the solution involved creating custom graphics, implementing a bank of player names, as well as preparations around the technical aspects for creating videos; like setting up a proper workflow and error handling. Ben Nakagawa, WSC Sports’ Head of Commercial in Japan, assisted with implementation along with other members of WSC’s staff who flew in from overseas to complete the setup. After an initial QA to check quality, the system was up and running.
“At its core WOWOW is proud to be a top broadcaster and we’ve been pursuing the best possible quality for our customers since our founding. During the testing phase, we showed our producers the quality of the automated videos and they were very pleased with the quality. We’re extremely happy that we’ve been able to achieve such a high standard of quality, while still generating videos at tremendous speed,” said Ryosuke Ito, Head of WOWOW’s CX Product Department.
However, he continued, “We haven’t fully utilized all the features offered on the platform.” Right now WSC Sports is used by over 500 of the world’s top teams, leagues, and broadcasters. Commenting on the future of the partnership, Nakagawa added, “We’re introducing some of the use cases that we’ve done with clients in other countries, but there’s still a lot more we can do. I’m very excited about the work we’ll continue to do in the months and years to come.”
What’s Next for AI in Sports?
As AI continues to be applied to multiple facets of everyday life, its application in the world of sports is also likely to grow. So, what are some of the future possibilities?
Ben Nakagawa says that GenAI is up next. For example, during the World Cup finals the game went to a penalty shootout and the winner was decided when the last player missed. What would the scene on the pitch have looked like if the other team had won? Showing that would be possible with GenAI.
Besides creating hypothetical “what if” scenarios, there are several other applications that WSC Sports is working on to make content more fun. WOWOW’s Yuichi Togawa, Director of WOWOW’s CX Product Division, said he’s interested in using AI on data and audio. For example, visualizing the physical strength and conditioning of a player on the field, or automatically providing voice-over commentary to fans in Japanese.
“Of course, there are things that need to be cleared like copyright issues,” said Nakagawa. “But we share a common vision that AI can create limitless possibilities in our field—specifically in sports content.”
What kind of future awaits us? We look forward to seeing the innovations that come to fruition from this partnership between WOWOW Inc. and WSC Sports.
This article was translated from its original Japanese in halftime-media.com.