by Joe Dysart * June 13, 2022
Early commercial experiments with automated sports writing in the last decade is burgeoning into serious business for some AI-generated writing firms.
One of the most well-publicized toolmakers benefiting from the trend right is United Robots, which regularly scores new clients for its auto-sports writing tool.
One of United Robots’ clients — Swedish publisher NTM — for example, recently unveiled some successful numbers after automating much of its sports news with AI.
Specifically, Anna Karin Tilleby, a project manager at publisher NTM, says United Robots’ tool was able to bring in 952 new subscribers in 2021 for the news outlet — along with 9.5 million page views.
Says Tilleby, whose publishing house began experimenting with automated sports news in 2016:
“We were certainly among the first wave.
“The idea was to find a way of writing about the leagues and teams we hadn’t been able to cover.
“But curiosity also played a very big part.
“We really wanted to see what this technology could do and how it might work.”
Such publisher successes have triggered unease among many human writers.
They see automated news services as a threat to their livelihoods.
And they’ve seen editors and writers lose jobs after publishers adopted the tech.
(See: “The Robots Cometh: How artificial intelligence is automating writing jobs,” by Joe Dysart.
Even so, the furrowed brows and gnashing of teeth have done little to quash publisher enthusiasm for automated stories — especially when it comes to sports.
Neal Ronqist, general manager, Forum Communications, for example, says his media outlet has had great luck using AI-generated writing to cover two junior ice hockey leagues across Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Says Ronqist: AI affords us “unique opportunities to cover more teams, more players — in an efficient and creative manner.”
For many publishers, one of the key advantages of automated sports writing is its ability to grab data and economically churn-out hundreds or even thousands of sports stories about games — each of which may only be of interest to a handful of readers.
The overarching premise: If you auto-generate enough hyper-local sports news of extremely limited interest, you’ll still be able to attract a significant total readership to your news site overall.
Jochen Lang, CEO, MyTischtennis, is a publisher who has done just that.
Lang uses AI-generated writing from AX Semantics to automate coverage of highly specialized sporting news: The results of table tennis matches that are hosted by five table tennis associations in Germany.
Lang grabs match data from the associations and runs it through AX Semantics’ AI-generated writing software — which auto-produces a short news story on each match.
Says Lang: “The editorial offering has clearly struck a chord with users.
“Thanks to automated match reports, we have more traffic — and 1.5 million readers per season.”
Yet another publisher bringing thousands of stories to niche audiences is Dutch Media Group NDC.
It has already used United Robots’ AI writing tool to auto-produce coverage of 60,000 soccer matches (the European equivalent of U.S. football).
Observes a post on the United Robots’ Web site: “Robots will write the match reports, while photos and comments from coaches will be collected through a crowd-sourcing platform.”
The result: NDC offers unique local journalism that gives local communities – teams, players, coaches and fans – a stake in the sports reporting, according to the United Robots post.
Adds Ard Boer, sport product manager, NDC: “Thanks to automated journalism, we’re able to write about every single local football match — coverage that’s not provided by anyone else.
“That — combined with the crowd-sourcing element — will drive inclusivity and engagement in the local sports communities, and by extension, create value in our news brand.”
Also playing in the niche readership space is Arria NLG — a pioneer in AI-generated writing — and sports news expert Boost Sport AI.
The two have partnered to create a news service that enables news outlets to serve-up highly personalized sports news to their audiences.
The service hyper-personalizes stories by continually analyzing the kind of sports news a particular sports fan hungers for — and then providing those stories to the reader in an ever-more personalized way.
Stories can even be produced in the writing style the fan prefers — and cast in the writing tone-of-voice that fan responds to most enthusiastically.
Adds Hannes Andersson, CEO, ESMG, yet another media outlet that relies on hyper-personalized sports stories covering ice hockey, football and floorball:
“We believe publishing thousands of articles with a dozen or so views each generates value in a couple of ways.
“Firstly: It’s about reach, which is the foundation of our current business model.
“Local sports articles often go viral in small clusters, which means we reach big audiences on hyper-local level.
“It’s also important for our brand to be seen to provide coverage of all leagues and divisions, including junior ones.”
Of course, niche readership is only a slice of the news content spectrum that AI-generated toolmakers are auto-generating.
Some of the biggest players in news media, for example, are also tapping the potential of AI-generated sports news, according to Brad Weits, CEO of AI-generated writing company Data Skrive.
Weitz says publishers currently relying on Data Skrive’s services for AI-generated sports stories include the Associated Press, ESPN, USA Today, NASCA, Catena Media and Sports Illustrated.
AP, for example, relies heavily on Data Skrive’s automation to churn-out sports stories that preview upcoming sporting events, according to Barry Bedlan, global director, text and new markets, Associated Press.
Those stories are perfect for gamblers who are looking for advance analysis on winners and losers, according to Bedlan.
Says Bedlan: With “sports betting, the expectation is that not only will we have recaps and photos from every major sporting event — but we’ll have some sort of a preview laying out what is at stake.”
Also cashing in on sports gaming is AI writing pioneer Narrativa, which helps auto-generate articles for sports gamblers who frequent the gaming Web site Sportsbet.io.
Narrativa’s AI-generated writing tool auto-produces articles on upcoming matches in English Premier League Soccer, for example — complete with the latest stats on the teams and its predictions for the game.
Even IBM has gotten into the automated sports news game, showcasing its own AI-generated writing prowess during the U.S. Open last year.
Before play even got underway, IBM was already serving-up micro-stories that featured its predictions on the probable outcomes of every single match tennis scheduled for the U.S. Open.
Fed by data on each player — along with media mentions about the players — IBM ran the info through its AI-powered supercomputer Watson to make predictions on winners and losers.
The result: Each micro-story featured head-and-shoulders shots of the two players up top, followed by a pithy quote about each player grabbed from online news media — and, of course, IBM’s short-and-sweet analysis on the match-up.
That analysis turned-out to be a number-crunchers delight, with supercomputer insights on tennis player, Novak Djokovic, for example, such as:
~Through the 1st Round, he (Djokovic) has a percentage of points with winners of 28%, 2nd among players in the field of 128
~Djokovic’s percentage of errors from the backhand is 56%, ranking 10th in the field
Meanwhile, Watson’s take on Djokovic’s opponent, Tallon Griekspoor, included:
~Through the 1st Round, his (Griekspoor’s) fastest serve speed is 149 MPH (240 KMH), 2nd among players in the field of 128
~Griekspoor’s percentage of points with backhand errors is 4%, versus 7% for Djokovic
Bottom line: It appears certain that sports fans’ love for stats and numbers — along with AI’s ability to rapidly transform that data into easily digestible sporting news — virtually guarantees that ever more current and start-up news publishers, small and big, will be increasingly turning to AI to crank-out much of their sports coverage.
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.