The partnership aims to drive innovation across football and other sports by using new and existing solutions
LaLiga expands partnership with Microsoft to build innovative technology solutions for football and other sports. (Credit: LaLiga)
Spanish football association LaLiga has expanded its partnership with Microsoft to digitally transform football across the world and reimagine a new era in sports by building innovative technology solutions.
By leveraging LaLiga Tech, the technology offering of LaLiga, the parties will collaborate on developing technology solutions to the media and entertainment sector.
Previously, Microsoft had helped the football association boost its fan engagement with multiple digital channels and conversational artificial intelligence (AI).
Microsoft as the association’s global tech and innovation partner will help develop new solutions and also make use of existing solutions for bringing in innovation across the sports industry.
The tech major said that its Azure Event Hubs, Azure Databricks, Azure Data Lake, and Azure Machine Learning solutions will be used by the partnership for delivering data-enhanced match coverage for fans. Besides, the solutions will be used for providing customised over the top (OTT) streaming options like selection of camera angles in matches.
LaLiga will also offer augmented reality, 3-D replays, virtual reality, and other new experiences for fans through the partnership.
For rights holders, commercial partners, and broadcasters, the partners will use Azure, Power BI, Dynamics 365, Azure Cosmos DB, SQL Database, and Azure Machine learning for enabling an improved OTT streaming platform.
According to Microsoft, the platform will feature customised recommendations and improved experiences with relevant content, services, and games.
The partnership will also cater to venue managers by deploying the Power BI and Azure solutions to help them optimise stadium operations by means of innovations in security, and also by utilising 5G for delivering unified in-stadium experiences.
Microsoft EVP and global sales, marketing and operations president Jean-Philippe Courtois said: “We are thrilled to expand our partnership with LaLiga as it makes further bold moves to deepen engagement with its hundreds of millions of fans, while bringing new business models to market with Microsoft cloud and AI capabilities.
“Microsoft is proud to help accelerate LaLiga’s digital innovation and empower exciting new business opportunities in the sports and entertainment industries through LaLiga’s technology portfolio.”
As part of the partnership, LaLiga will leverage Microsoft Azure, including AI and machine learning for its LaLigaSportsTV OTT platform and Mediacoach platform for transforming interactive audiovisual experiences and formats.
LaLiga president Javier Tebas said: “We value Microsoft as our technology and innovation partner and appreciate how they collaborate deeply to build innovative solutions aimed at solving business challenges specific to our industry.
“We are moving into a new era in which technology will become the centre of the fan experience and data insights will power the next stage of global growth.”