Technology is transforming every industry, and fusing with the sports industry, it’s offered exceptional results.
On such technology, AI in sports has just come up as a game-changer element from practices to real games.
It has brought revolutionary changes with early detection of injuries, offering real-time data to coaches and more.
Further, the AI is playing an effective role beyond the field, offering the best experience to fans.
It offers personalized sports highlights, real-time summaries, and chatbots to the fans.
So, it proved that AI has a strong future in sports, being an indispensable player.
Want to dig deeper into knowing more about the role of AI in sports? We have explained everything in detail related to how AI is impacting the sports industry.
Overview of AI in Sports: Market Size and Related Stats
Before going further into knowing about the powerful role AI plays in the sports industry, it will be best to get an overview of AI in sports market.
With time, the sports industry has seen a drastic growth due to the intervention of the power of AI. It is estimated that globally, the value of the sports market in the year 2025 will be $7.73 billion.
The same market is expected to reach the value of $39.65 billion by the year 2023, which is kind of interesting.
Between the year 2025 to 2032, the global sports market will witness a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.3% due to Artificial Intelligence.
This growth is the result of the high adoption of machine learning and computer vision by sports organisations.
This advanced technology lets the sports organisation generate crucial data from the player’s biometric data, stats of the game, and others.
After extracting a large amount of data the organisation can use it to improve their activity, which will give them growth over the competition.
Challenges and Their Solutions of AI in the Sports Industry
Artificial intelligence, or AI, has brought revolution in every industry and has changed the whole game in the sports industry as well.
AI for sports has transformed athletes’ training sessions, decisions of the coach, and the way fans engage.
Integrating this smart technology is the reason that brought technological innovation and great opportunities to the sports industry.
However, AI in sports industry has brought notable challenges that must be explored.
Here we have explained a few of both the challenges and opportunities of implementing AI in sports.
Challenges
► Breach of Privacy and Security
AI technology in sports goes through, analyzes, and collects the private data of the athletes, their performance stats, and health stats.
All these stats are sensitive data of the athletes, which is always on the verge of getting exposed due to the intervention of AI.
So, it’s become quite challenging to protect the personal data of the athletes and their strategy due to AI.
► Dependency on AI
Artificial intelligence in sports is quite helpful since it can provide insights that will help in coaching and management, identify risk, optimise training, etc.
All these blessings can bring a risk with them, that is, the team, coach, and organisation can possibly get dependent upon AI-driven decisions.
Too much dependence is not good because it can undervalue the natural elements like intuition, emotional intelligence, and leadership of the coach.
► Costly and Restricted
AI technology is an innovative solution, but it can be heavy on the pocket, which not everyone can afford.
Small teams or sports organisations cannot be able to embrace the power of AI like the big teams who got funds, so the small teams will fall behind.
This will create a gap and partiality among the wealthier and smaller organisations, which is not correct.
Solutions
♦ Ethical Use of AI
Ethical use of AI in sports can restrict the breach of privacy and security. Strong encryption of data can safeguard unauthorized access to the sensitive data of the athletes.
It is crucial to implement role-based access control (RBAC) so that only authorised persons can access sensitive data.
Before processing, make sure to remove personally identifiable information (PII) to protect the identity of the athletes and regularly audit the security.
♦ Ethical AI Usage by Humans
There should be a balance between getting AI insights and human decision-making so that coaches and athletes can give strength to critical thinking skills.
Sports professionals should regularly train to understand, interpret, and manage the outputs of AI to avoid becoming too dependent on AI.
Must avoid sudden dependency upon the AI tool by introducing it gradually and taking time for adaptation.
♦ Gradually Implementing AI
Don’t go for full-scale deployment of an AI system and focus on affordable pilot projects.
It’s best to collaborate with the AI start-up that offers affordable and innovative solutions for sports teams to avoid falling behind.
Starting with small steps and extending as much as needed by using modular and scalable AI tools in sports.
Small sports organisations can seek governments for funding or from someone interested in technology advancement.
AI Frameworks and Technologies Used in Sports
Since AI has multiple uses in the sports industry, you should know the AI frameworks and the technologies widely used.
We have listed a few of the key AI frameworks and technologies that have wide usage in sports.
➤ Machine Learning and Deep Learning
The AI app for sports uses primarily machine learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL), both play their individual crucial role.
Machine Learning plays the role of a reading algorithm from various data that helps in predicting players’ performance, injury risk, and optimizing team strategy.
On the other hand, deep learning is a subset of ML used to process the complex data of images, videos, and sensor data.
The popular frameworks include TensonFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-learn, and others.
➤ Natural Language Processing (NLP)
In sport, Natural Language Processing(NLP) is a whole AI system that helps computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language.
The NLP is used in sports and plays a crucial role in analyzing the sentiments of the fans to automatically generate commentary.
It also develops a system of chatbots to generate fan engagement.
There are a few frameworks used to develop NLP, like Hugging Face Transformers, SpaCy, and NLTK. This will help in offering summarised match highlights, real-time text commentary, etc.
➤ IoT and Wearable Sensors
To analyse and collect the real-time data of players’ performance and their health, the Internet of Things (IoT) and wearables play a crucial role.
It is used in devices like smartwatches, GPS trackers, and heart rate monitoring that capture the crucial metrics related to players like speed, distance, heart rate, and body temperature.
AI analyzes these crucial points to track the player load, help in injury prevention, and create an optimized training program for the players.
The wearable devices support coaches in maintaining training intensity and player recovery.
Benefits of Integrating AI into the Sports Industry
Despite the difficulties, the beneficial impact of AI on Sports Industry cannot be avoided.
Within the ecosystem of sports, from organizations to athletes and fans, everyone is enjoying the significant improvements due to AI.
By using AI in sports, organisations, coaches, and teams have signed up for a powerful shift that offers them innovation once considered impossible.
We have listed and shared a few of the key AI benefits in sports that you must know.
► Prevent Injury and Improve Performance
AI-powered gadgets are used by athletes today that monitor their biometrics, movements, and fatigue level, overall keeping the health of players in check.
Such AI technology is capable of real-time detection of any risk that alerts the coach and the athletes about early prevention of the injury.
Moreover, such apps also help the athletes to understand their potential and optimise their performance accordingly to stay on top.
► Data Driven Training Session
Coaches can provide data-driven training sessions to the athletes that will offer more effective results.
AI will help the trainer or the coach to make an automatic analysis of the team dynamics and individual limits.
Sports analytics with AI helps coaches to reconstruct their training strategies or create more effective training sessions for their athletes.
AI can detect the training pattern of the opponents and reset the whole training strategy midway.
► Turn the Game With Real Time Analytics
Prime AI benefits for sports apps are that it carries the ability to turn the game mid-way with real-time analytics.
AI in fantasy sports apps offers in-game analytics to the users, which show them real-time insights. AI in a real game helps players track their positioning and the course of the ball.
These insights will help the players to plan their game strategies at the moment. AI also provides instant replay and decision accuracy to ensure a fairer game.
► Sports Betting and Prediction Benefits
Sports betting and accurate prediction are other excellent benefits offered by the AI system.
If you develop a fantasy sports app integrating the power of AI, you can offer sports betting and prediction benefits.
AI in fantasy apps has the potential to read through the broad sets of data that help to analyse the player’s performance, game conditioning, and trends.
AI for fantasy sports apps brings accuracy in the prediction, which increases the scope of winning.
► AI Helps in the Fair Recruitment of Players
One of the major benefits of AI in sports is that it helps in the process of fair recruitment of players.
AI can efficiently analyse the player’s data, like speed, accuracy, stamina, and tactics, from general matches or practices.
The video of the practice matches can be analysed by the AI system, which can automatically highlight players’ key strengths and weaknesses.
The best thing is that it saves the coach’s time on manual video review.
Use Cases of AI in the Sports Industry
You already know that AI has revolutionized the whole landscape of the sports industry, making everything work out smoothly.
But the question is how AI is being utilised in the real world of the sports industry.
We have got the answer for you, which we have explained below in a list.
1. Effective Training Sessions
In the real world of sports, an AI coach will take the training sessions of the players to the next level.
Many companies have created an AI system that helps in tracking the performance of players during training.
It can monitor the speed, endurance, and movement patterns of the players, which helps coaches to develop strategies for training and games.
AI can also analyze the video footage of the practice sessions to create more effective training sessions that help to play a fair game.
2. For the Health and Safety of the Players
AI in a sports app or gadget for players comes with the benefit of preventing injuries, which helps players to stay healthy and safe.
Some sports apps are available that can predict injuries of the player, analyzing different factors and preparing a tailored training routine.
An AI for sports apps can analyze the training intensity and gauge past performance, which can predict players who are at high risk of injury.
Moreover, with the benefits of wearable tech, which do more than step counting, like sleep analysis, etc, to help players perform best without overdoing it.
3. Strategies Game Smartly For Coaches
The AI can analyse the performance of the whole team, not just one player, and, as on the trends and style of the game, it creates a strategy.
So, the coach doesn’t have to manually plan the game; the AI helps to plan it, transforming the weakness of the players into strength.
AI helps simulate different scenarios, helping players to sharpen their game strategies before hitting the field.
For a high-stakes game, it’s come as a blessing and works as a secret weapon for the coach to smartly strategize the game and beat the opponents.
4. Offer a Personalised Experience to the Fans
Because of AI, fans can connect with their favourite teams and players more seamlessly. AI can analyse the favourite players of the fan and highlight content based on their preference.
It can even recommend products as per fans’ preferences, offering them a more personalised experience.
It has even come as a blessing for the sports media because they got the chance to keep fans engaged without the manual efforts.
The AI system will provide audience match summaries, statistics, and real-time updates of the live game automatically.
How to Leverage the Rising Use of AI in Sports?
Artificial intelligence has made life easier for humans with its ability to offer data-driven solutions.
Unlike other industries, you now know how AI is changing sports, helping the coach and the athletes make smarter decisions.
We will now discuss the way AI can be leveraged for different areas in sports.
AI in sports
► Player Recruitment
AI has an excellent use in sports; first of all, it can be an excellent solution for recruiting players without hassle.
There are devices powered by AI that can read through the big data of the players, like performance, and also previous data like scores, fitness, etc.
After evaluating this information, it helps the coach to recruit the best players.
► Skill and Performance Development
AI is helping players with their skills and performance development with a personalised training solution.
It includes sensory technology, which gauges the skills and techniques of the players during training. It can give real-time feedback on players’ performance.
After the reports, AI creates a personalized training program for performance improvement.
AI For Data Collection
♦ Scouting Players
The priority of every sports institution is that they must have a team of the best players, for which they scout players.
Scouting is a time-consuming process if done manually, since the process needs to scrutinize each player thoroughly.
With the power of AI, it can be done very seamlessly and accurately, by automatically measuring different parameters of the players.
♦ Predict Matches
AI and ML in fantasy sports apps are helping users to predict match results from previous data for accurate betting.
People are using fantasy sports apps for betting and with the opportunity of winning rewards.
The fantasy sports statistics of the previous matches and the winning team help in choosing the correct players who can boost the chance of winning.
AI For Sports Business
➤ Improve Advertisement Strategies
AI helps sports businesses to improve their advertising strategies with a more personalised solution.
The smart AI system detects the language of the commenters to highlight the thrilling moments of the game.
It will create subtitles for the live match to make it understandable for mass viewers. It also finds the best camera angle and helps improve live commentary.
➤ Automated Journalism
The dream of automated sports journalism will soon become a reality because of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
This smart technology will transform sports broadcasting by automatically preparing reports on the matches.
AI will automatically create highlights from the matches without taking a lot of time, like manual creation, which reduces the marketing time of the media.
How Nimble AppGenie Can Help You Develop AI-Driven Sports Applications
If you are planning to step into the sports industry with a fantasy app, then it is one of the profitable investments, looking into the craze of match betting.
Such an app can be a little complicated to create, and that is why you should choose the best fantasy sports app development company, Nimble AppGenie.
The skilled team of developers knows their job and also knows what mistakes to avoid while developing a fantasy sports app.
Moreover, they offer a budget-friendly app development solution to global clients. So, choose Nimble AppGenie if you are looking for flawless and pocket-friendly app development service.
Conclusion
So, you know that AI in sports has brought revolution, which is reshaping every aspect of the sports industry.
Whether it is a fantasy app or enhancing an athlete’s performance, AI is opening the door to new possibilities.
With this article, you have gathered complete knowledge on how AI is positively impacting the sports industry.
You know the framework and technology used, how AI can be used, and get to look into some real-life use cases.
So, if you aim to stay ahead in the sports industry, start embracing the power of AI today.
FAQs
Niketan Sharma is the CTO of Nimble AppGenie, a prominent website and mobile app development company in the USA that is delivering excellence with a commitment to boosting business growth & maximizing customer satisfaction. He is a highly motivated individual who helps SMEs and startups grow in this dynamic market with the latest technology and innovation.
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