Digital & Dirt
00:35:03 · Monica Ellingson, Ian Dallimore
And, you know, it was key that we kept it simple that way, you know, because it's, you know, not every fan is gonna gonna wanna dig deeper into that. But, you know, we just started this. I mean, literally in June, I saw a proof of concept for serve quality. We created a three d model of the court, the player, and the ball motion as well as part of this. And I said, hey. Well, you know, people have been doing this for kind of a while now in terms of, you know, visualizing the court, the movement, the motion on the court. But what can we actually... What insights can we pull from that? And within a matter of weeks, we had the serve quality score. We had the overall fan experience. We were able to test that and get... Enroll that into the digital platforms, which we released in August. So that's an extremely fast timeline timeline that we were able to go from proof of concept or idea all the way to launching the product. [00:36:04] S0: Yeah. Definitely shout out to your team on that because that is a... That could have been an easy like, okay, let's let's continue to test this beta internally and then let's launch it. But, yeah, that's that's fascinating. Do you ever do you ever try to use the same mechanics? You probably don't have the cameras and whatnot, but, like, on your own serve to be like, hey, coach. I got this.
00:36:04 · Ian Dallimore, Monica Ellingson
[00:36:04] S0: Yeah. Definitely shout out to your team on that because that is a... That could have been an easy like, okay, let's let's continue to test this beta internally and then let's launch it. But, yeah, that's that's fascinating. Do you ever do you ever try to use the same mechanics? You probably don't have the cameras and whatnot, but, like, on your own serve to be like, hey, coach. I got this. [00:36:24] S1: Not not yet. It exists. I mean, some coaches have that. You know, there are there are apps where you can, you know, hang your phone from the the fence and, you know, it will capture video and do some analytics on that. I personally haven't because I'm like, I know what I need to do. I just need to get out there and practice. [00:36:40] S0: What level are you by the way? [00:36:42] S1: I'm a USTA four o player. Mean, just, you know, just intermediate. [00:36:48] S0: I won't even bother you with the pickleball question because that's always [00:36:51] S1: Oh, I mean, pickleball is great. Anything to get people off their sofas and out there being active. [00:36:56] S0: But I have some diehard tennis friends that are like four fives, five o's, and Uh-huh. And you would think that they're like a bunch of hooligans showing up at the country club. It's just this... Like, everybody chill out. [00:37:07] S1: It's just
00:37:07 · Monica Ellingson, Ian Dallimore
[00:37:07] S1: It's just [00:37:07] S0: a sport. Alright. So IBM likelihood to win. This one is like... It's one of my favorite things that happen not just in tennis and and golf, but watching... I'm a big college basketball Duke fan. And I love when the likelihood to win, it's like 982%, and then it starts to shift. And then you see, to your point, the data points that you guys have, you see the momentum shifts in a game. And then so watching... Like, I I actually root for the likelihood to win, to lose and be wrong. But again, it's another data point that you guys... And I'd love for you to talk a little bit deeper about it, where I'm assuming you're using like historical data and and when these things occur and when this much time's left, but it's probably deeper than that. Like, is the first string in, the second string in, who's all these things. So... But the likelihood to win is one of my favorite data points that I know you guys use on a few things, and it's fun to watch it. Not be wrong, but sway back and forth because that's when it gets super exciting.
00:38:06 · Monica Ellingson
[00:38:06] S1: Yeah. I think the likelihood of when we've had for a few years now and and really it... You know, fans expect this. You know, they... They're looking for predictive, you know, performance measurements. And, you know, of course, everybody wants to see like, oh, IBM was wrong this time. But the thing that I really like that we we did this year was we actually two years ago, we changed the likelihood to win to be live. So to produce the likelihood to win, we are analyzing. At the US Open, we have access to twenty years of historical data. Of course, we have live stats that are coming in. And so these are updated after every single match. And then we're also processing what everyone in the industry. So what are the pundits talking about these particular players? And all that comes together to make the likelihood to win. And then after every single point in the match, we're updating that. So you can see this ebb and flow of momentum, which you mentioned earlier and which really helps with the storytelling. But we rolled out the live likelihood to win, which updated after every point two years ago. And I was looking at it and I said, but if you're a fan and let's say you stepped away for a few minutes and you come back in and you're like, what happened right here? What happened at that momentum shift? So we then we added in, you know, key... The key points, which basically talks about, at that particular momentum shift, what happened so that you can catch up and get a better understanding as the tug of war between two players occurs, you know, what happened at that particular point? What was the key that pushed it over the edge, you know, back over to, you know, the other player, etcetera? So we're just continuing to evolve that as a storytelling measure, you know, because like you said, I mean, every single sport has some level of momentum involved in it. And, you know, that's really these, you know, when that shift, that momentum shift occurs is think about like, you know, any kind of story you're trying to tell, you have a, you know, the buildup and then you have, you know, the climax. So it's the climax of the story. You know, what happened at that point, you know, and continue to evolve that and, you know, be able to help with these storytelling measures.
00:40:26 · Monica Ellingson, Ian Dallimore
And, again, you know, expand the resources of our editorial teams and expand the available content to further personalize these fan experiences. [00:40:35] S0: Yeah. And just to clarify, I wasn't rooting for IBM to be wrong. Was rooting for for the team that that I'm rooting against to to lose in that momentum switch over. But... And you kinda touched on my my next question is you guys do such an amazing job of taking extremely complex data and technology and just making it feel very simple and intuitive to the end user. And I know that's the majority of what your job is, is to take that data and to make it very simplistic. But that's not very easy to do. Right?
00:41:05 · Monica Ellingson, Ian Dallimore
[00:41:05] S1: No. No. I think... I mean, probably the Masters App is the the best example of that and, you know, being able to... You know, it's very difficult to get a ticket to the Masters. And, you know, we want to bring the beauty and the traditions behind Augusta National as well as the performance of the players, you know, and to create a... An elegant digital experience that not only bubbles up data, but, you know, makes you... Does capture some of the beauty of being there on the course. So it's extremely important, you know, thinking about, you know, supporting the Masters brand, all of the different iconic elements of that within a digital space while also pushing the the envelope behind innovation and bringing, you know, new first of a kind experiences to golf fans, you know, across the globe. So that's that's probably, you know, one of the... You know, and the fact that you can't bring your phones there either. So it's a completely virtual fan experience. And that's something that's, you know, always at the forefront of our minds of, you know, how continue to innovate? How do we continue to tell these data driven stories, yet preserve, you know, beauty within that and create something that is as elegant and as fantastic as the azaleas at Augusta National? [00:42:30] S0: What which partnership came first? The US Open, USTA or the Augusta? [00:42:35] S1: I think it's actually Wimbledon is the oldest. [00:42:38] S0: Oh, Okay.