🥇🤖 ⚽ #8: Olympic Innovations, AI x Sports, VR Soccer, Ozzy Osbourne & the latest creative sports ads

Welcome to Issue #8 of Innovation in Sport, your regular round-up of the latest innovations and trends in sports & esports media, fan experience, impact & community engagement.

As we prepare for the Opening Ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics tonight, there’s unsurprisingly an Olympic flavour to this week’s edition. 

How can we expect to experience the Games from a broadcast point of view? How will the arrival of AI impact the Games? And how will brands be making the most of this enormous and rare opportunity to engage with global audiences?

I also highlight two of my favourite sport-related ads from the past week, and look at how technologies like AI, VR, and gaming are helping to make different sports safer, more immersive, and energy efficient.

Enough of my own ‘opening ceremony’, let’s get started...

POLL OF THE WEEK

📹 MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS

🥇Will this be the most unique opening ceremony in Olympic history?
Our French hosts have hatched an audacious plan featuring more than 10,000 Olympic athletes travelling down the River Seine on team boats as part of a 3.7-mile route crossing the heart of Paris, passing through some of its most famed bridges and landmarks, and concluding in front of the Trocadéro.

🥇 SportsPro looks into how Paris 2024 will be shown around the world, the new innovations planned, and the key broadcasters.

🥇 Marketing experts are calling Paris 20204 ‘The first TikTok Olympics’ as more brands look beyond broadcast to connect with audiences throughout the Games.
This comes after the 2021 Tokyo Olympics largely failed to connect with younger audiences who had already started turning away from legacy media in favour of video-first social.

🥇If brand marketing is your thing, or you simply like to keep abreast of how brands are activating around the Olympics, this page promises to keep a rolling tracker of activations spotted in and around the Games.

📱Reddit has signed content partnerships with several US sports leagues, including the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), the PGA Tour and Nascar racing series. The partnership will give Reddit users access to video highlights from games and tournaments, player ask me anything (AMA) sessions, behind-the-scenes videos and more.

👨🏽‍🤝‍👨🏼 FAN EXPERIENCE 🏟️

⚽ U.S Soccer and Xtadium have announced a collaboration to bring U.S. Men’s and Women’s National Team game content to virtual reality through the Xtadium app on the Meta Quest Headset. The immersive VR content will include highlights and behind-the-scenes content from three recent USMNT matches.

📱Sports technology firm Sportradar will allow bookmaker customers to integrate live sports data and betting odds into social media video adverts. Meta’s platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, will be supported first.

⚽ The EFL, in partnership with Genius Sports, has officially launched ‘Fantasy EFL’, the League’s first-ever 72-club fantasy football game to involve all clubs across the three EFL divisions.

✨NEW FEATURE:
CREATIVITY HIGHLIGHTS REEL 🎨
Showcasing the finest creative work in sports & esports

‘Winning isn’t for everyone / Am I a bad person?’ by Nike

This Nike commercial that dropped last week has got a lot of people talking.

Placing the emphasis on the often overlooked single-minded and selfish traits that it takes to be an elite-level athlete, the spot timed to coincide with the Olympics, features footage of Nike-sponsored athletes old and new such as Serena Williams, Cristiano Ronaldo, Alexia Putellas, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Qinwen Zheng, A’ja Wilson and many more. 

The finishing touch is a devilish voiceover by serial movie bad guy Willem Dafoe. Let me know what you think.

Aston Villa Home Kit Launch 2024/25 by adidas

Meanwhile, Aston Villa are making the most of their new kit partnership with adidas, as well as their arrival in the UEFA Champions League with an excellent new kit launch video.

Featuring Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler alongside Unai Emery and Villa stars past and present, the spot brings a smile to any football fan’s face, and I imagine, builds a huge amount of excitement for the new season amongst Villa fans.

💡INNOVATION x SPORTS 🦾

🤖 Nickelytics is helping bring powerful autonomous robots to sports arenas worldwide

🤖 AI x SPORTS

🥇Team USA and NBCUniversal have partnered with Google to showcase tools like Search, Gemini and Google Maps during the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

• Search AI overviews will power ‘Explain the Games’ content 

• Gemini AI will be used by NBC’s ‘chief super fan commentator’ and comedian Leslie Jones to come up with custom moves or learn a new sport

• Five Olympians and Paralympians will feature in social videos and late-night promos, using Google Lens, Circle to Search, Immersive View in Google Maps and Gemini to explore Paris

⛵SailGP is using AI Cameras that can stop collisions before they happen.

🎾 Sportradar is revolutionising player protection with the ATP Tour's new "Safe Sport" initiative. This AI-powered service moderates social media in real time to combat online abuse, providing education and investigative support for athletes.

⚽ AI-powered cameras will broadcast the Marshall Islands’ first ever futsal match. This is an example of how AI tools are democratising smaller teams and nations’ access to high-level broadcasting.

🌍 IMPACT & SUSTAINABILITY

🥇 The Paris Olympics will use Alibaba’s AI-powered energy-saving tool to analyse electricity consumption in competition venues, as the organisers aim to pull off the first carbon-neutral Games.

🤾‍♀️ WOMEN'S SPORT ⛹️‍♀️

⚽ YouTube has replaced FA Player as the streaming home of England’s WSL (Women’s Super League). 
All 66 games not broadcast by Sky Sports or the BBC will be live-streamed globally on the league’s YouTube channel.

🎮 ESPORTS 🎮

🎮 Manchester City have become the first football club to launch an official Fortnite creative map. ‘The Ladder’ Map is inspired by City’s ‘glyphs’, with symbols representing a ‘collection of recognisable icons’ within the club’s brand

🎮 Electronic Arts (EA) used new AI tech to bring 11,000 college football players to digital life for its new EA Sports College Football 25 video game.

⏱️ EXTRA TIME ⏱️
A little something extra

🇰🇷 A 12-hour ‘Best Dream Concert’ in South Korea is actively aiming to put its audience to sleep. Featuring soothing music, yoga for sleep, and attendees dressed in pyjamas, tickets sold out at KRW 70,000 (USD 50).

🥇 And finally… Is it true that the athletes in Paris are being made to sleep in anti-sex beds?!

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See you next time,

Adam Reed
Innovation in Sport

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