Late February saw an inventive collaboration between multimedia giants Foxtel and Fox Sports, plus Google and agency Mindshare in the form of the greatest cricketing mind of all time – ‘Monty’.
Monty is a new star of the Australian cricket world: a custom created machine learning model designed to identify when and how wickets will fall during live games in real time.
Part of Foxtel’s commitment to provide fans with ‘cricket like never before’, this cutting-edge piece of cricket AI blends marketing with fan experience as it offers Aussie cricket lovers alerts by spotting a wicket up to five minutes before it actually falls.
A unique, future predicting instant alert for fans watching the game on Fox Cricket.
Monty was ‘trained’ by watching every single ball bowled by the Australian National Men’s team the last 18 months more than 500,000 times in order to build up patterns of play to create a bespoke ‘Wicket Warning’ system for Foxtel viewers.
The AI model recognises patterns in player behaviour, based on past form and the live conditions of the pitch, and when Monty is confident a wicket will fall the model ‘autonomously deploys new creative and adapts bidding across dynamic display, pre-roll and digital outdoor’ to ensure that Foxtel cricket fans never miss a key on-pitch moment.
Over Australia’s summer cricket season, Monty has continued to learn and has predicted 500 wickets across international games: delivering cricket conversation and marketing cut through and cost-effective conversions for Foxtel.
According to Foxtel, Monty has already made a winning start and has driven a double-digit increase in weekly sales growth following his introduction to the team.
As Monty’s success became apparent, agency Mindshare created new experiences that enabled cricket supporters to tap into and leverage its cricketing insight.
So Monty’s predictions were integrated into the Fox Cricket app for the Boxing Day Test: with push alerts flagging up when the next wicket will fall being sent out during the summer’s flagship match.
Fans also saw Monty welcomed into homes across Australia via a Google Assistant experience on Google Home.
This feature enabled cricket fans to say ‘Hey Google, ask Monty for the next wicket’ and then listen as the AI described which of the current players batting were the most uncomfortable and which would lose his wicket next.
“Monty’s exceeded all expectations and earned his spot on the team by delivering results every match,” commented Foxtel senior marketing manager Chris Pocock.
“This media innovation is a perfect demonstration of how creativity and data can combine to create a totally new experience for fans.”
While Mindshare’s head of innovation Jack Smyth said: “We’re at the cutting edge of creativity and data. Monty’s proof that a new era of analytics is here and we’ve ensured Foxtel and Fox Sports are leading the way. Monty’s learning more with every single ball and working with Foxtel and Fox Sports we’re going to build on our first mover advantage. To see an idea leap from messaging all the way through to a totally new way to watch the game is incredibly exciting – and only possible thanks to the Foxtel team’s appetite for innovation.”
Katie Rigg-Smith, Mindshare’s Australasia CEO added: “As an agency we pride ourselves on original thinking. Monty’s a powerful demonstration of what that means for our clients: rather than promote a new sport channel, we found a new way for fans to enjoy every game.”
Comment:
To us, this initiative initially sounded like either sporting science fiction or an early April Fool.
But no.
To Foxtel it means an AI bot that helped deliver an 18% growth increase in weekly sales and helped it achieve the highest market share in the sector.
Indeed, its main market competitor’s market share dropped from 49.9% to 20.8%.
Little wonder then that the Foxtel/Mindshare Monty team is looking at how its AI predictive expertise can be deployed across the Australian sports space.
It seems that maybe there is no longer any need for umpires, or players, or even sports marketers…..
Links:
Foxtel
https://www.facebook.com/FOXTEL
https://www.instagram.com/foxtel
https://www.youtube.com/user/FOXTEL
Mindshare
https://www.mindshareworld.com/
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