Wimbledon and IBM push digital boundaries with ambitious innovations to enhance fan and player engagement

LONDON, U.K. - 18 Jun 2015: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and The All England Club, Wimbledon, today revealed a combination of ambitious innovations for The Championships to mark the next step in the AELTC's award-winning digital strategy.

Making use of its latest technology advancements in cloud, analytics mobile, social and security, IBM and Wimbledon will bring tennis fans closer to the prestigious Grand Slam event -- no matter where they are located -- with unparalleled access to real-time live scoring, courtside action and insights, via a radical redevelopment and redesign of wimbledon.com and advancement of the mobile apps experience.

With help from IBM, we are providing a world class digital experience with the best real time content to fans of The Championships. This allows them to get closer to all the action across all of Wimbledon's 19 courts, no matter where they are, or what device they're using, said Mick Desmond, Commercial & Media Director at the AELTC.

The new wimbledon.com, redesigned to be responsive and adaptive to any device by digital agency IBM Interactive Experience, is essential to millions of fans worldwide who cannot physically make it to SW19. With 63 million visits to wimbledon.com from around the globe during The Championships 2014, the digital technologies provided in partnership with IBM are an expanding and critical part of the Wimbledon fan experience.

Serving up uninterrupted access to real-time Wimbledon match records and trends allows us to showcase the benefits of delivering insights at speed, said Sam Seddon, Wimbledon Client & Programme Executive, IBM. For Wimbledon, this capability will allow them to enrich the fan experience by providing a comprehensive and compelling digital platform featuring instant access to video, scores, articles, interviews and breaking tournament news.

The AELTC's digital strategy for The Championships 2015 is powered by the following IBM innovations:

Redesigned wimbledon.com & mobile apps by IBM Interactive Experience

IBM has continued to refine the web and mobile app experience that provides an experience for fans all over the globe that is the next best thing to being there.'

The new wimbledon.com, responsive and adaptive to all platforms, celebrates the beauty of The Championships, while giving the fan content in context to encourage them to dive deeper into the event. With real-time live scores integrated alongside live and on-demand video, infographics and exclusive insights, the ambitious redesign breaks the mould of event websites, providing a uniquely cohesive experience in a stunning Wimbledon setting, whether you are on desktop, tablet or mobile.

The personalised Wimbledon apps, available for Apple iPhone, iPad and Android devices, continue to be the ultimate companion to The Championships. Providing instant access to scores, player information, match analysis and video, new for 2015, the apps now have an offline mode, for the fan to continue browsing when on-the-go, and several other improvements.

IBM Big Data Analytics and Watson power breaking match stats & insights - Advanced analytics via IBM InfoSphere Streams will identify breaking match facts in near real-time and, via Watson Engagement Advisor, provide related insights and historical context. Wimbledon staff will be able to pose further questions in natural language, as if they had the world s best tennis expert on-hand, and shared these insights with fans via social media and the Wimbledon digital platforms.

The combination of Streams and Watson will bring unprecedented analysis and awareness to the Wimbledon digital output. For example, Wimbledon staff will be able to quickly surface information and insights about interesting, important or even record-breaking player and match statistics such as rapidly comparing Andy Murray's 2nd serve percentage from his Championships-winning matches in 2013 to his real-time performance in 2015.

Personalized player website powered and built on IBM Bluemix Cloud- IBM has designed and produced a website that will provide players with personalised information about their match schedules, reports and historical insights about other players and real-time updates about the tournament information to enhance player engagement and experience throughout The Championships.

wimbledon.com Social engagement powered by IBM SoftLayer and Customer Experience Labs - Using leading Social Media Analytics from IBM and ground breaking research from the IBM CxLabs, the Wimbledon Social Command Centre identifies the most influential voices around Wimbledon and tennis, understands the content and topics fans are most interested in, and proactively targets their social communications for maximum effect.

Cybersecurity - As Wimbledon's focus on digital platforms increases so too does the need to be ever more vigilant around security. During the course of The Championships IBM will detect and block thousands of suspicious events, providing AELTC a single, unified view of all security events and applies real time analytics to rapidly identify and address potential attacks.

In the first five months of 2015, IBM observed a 94% increase in the number of cybersecurity events managed by IBM on the wimbledon.com infrastructure compared to the same period in 2014. To put this in to context IBM manages over 20 billion security events every day for 10,000 clients around the world.

Notes to editors

IBM is the Official Supplier of Information Technology and Consultancy to The All England Lawn Tennis Club which stages The Championships. Since 1990, IBM has worked with the All England Club to introduce new technologies that help bring the wealth of real-time data captured during The Championships to life.

IBM sends the captured data around the world in an instant, keeping on-site broadcasters, media and tennis fan

LINK:	http://www-03.ibm.com/press/uk/en/pressrelease/47143.wss...
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