US Open Returns: USTA Develops Bountiful Digital Experience for At-Home Fans

US Open Returns: USTA Develops Bountiful Digital Experience for At-Home Fans For this global competition in the age of COVID, flexibility was key By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor

Wednesday, September 9, 2020 - 3:24 pm

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Every August in New York City, the borough of Queens is home to one of the most prestigious Grand Slam tournaments in tennis, the US Open. As COVID-19 continues to loom throughout the metropolitan area, matches are being played without spectators. The incredible effort of the United States Tennis Association's (USTA) digital team is serving up supplemental content on the US Open App and USOpen.org for avid and casual tennis fans alike.

Our digital properties are always about how we tell the story of the tournament to the world, says Kirsten Corio, managing director, ticket sales, hospitality and digital strategy, USTA. We considered our more casual fans since there may be few live sports being played. We thought about how we could help those fans learn more about the players and the matches, which led to the development of a few different things on USOpen.org and the app.

Change of Course: USTA Adapts to an Empty Flushing Meadows Finalizing the content strategy for one of tennis's crown jewels takes a ton of time. The effort usually starts shortly after the conclusion of the previous year's tournament, but the national shutdown of sports in March forced the USTA to change its process. The team monitored the situation and devised multiple backup plans.

Through IBM Watson, Match Insights gives fans a snapshot of player backgrounds and keys to upcoming matchups.

We were planning for different scenarios with some including fans, some including limited fans, and some including no fans whatsoever, says Corio. It wasn't until late May when we realized that there was no way that we could pull this off with fans onsite, so all of the digital activations that we planned since the end of the 2019 US Open had to be rethought.

Prior to the action taking place in Flushing, other competitions resumed without the presence of fans. As the pandemic worsened, the digital team needed to reimagine how to execute this newly developed approach with minimal onsite staffers and a majority of its workforce working from home, including Corio and Nicole Munroe, senior manager, pro tennis marketing, USTA.

We also had to think about how we would logistically operate the whole production remotely, Corio adds. Typically, we have a mix of editorial, video services, photography, digital, technology, social media, and the IBM team in one place. It's usually 65 people or so in that room, but no one is there this year.

The one challenge that needed to be overcome is to relay accurate and precise data for matches occurring miles away from the offsite team. With the possibility of latency added by the distance and by the pace of a match, the team came together to set up the necessary technologies.

We wanted to ensure that we had the backbone to enable real-time live scoring, point-by-point scoring, and all of the things that you come to expect from digital platforms year after year, says Corio. We're exceeding all of our expectations with how efficient we've been on both technical and content production.

Trusted Partner: IBM Watson's Role in Match Insights, Open Questions, Ask the Open IBM, the USTA's longtime official technology partner, was essential in constructing the infrastructure for the remote and cloud-based workflows. Along with supplying a sturdy production foundation for the USTA, it has also played a vital role in numerous amenities accessed on the digital avenues of the tournament. Through IBM Watson, the company's AI-driven analytical tool, both astute observers of the game and newcomers can spend hours on three main focal points: Match Insights, Open Questions, and Ask the Open.

Open Questions allows fans to give their take on some of the sport's age-old debates.

Prior to any match, Match Insights provides a quick overview of upcoming matches through public information gathered from countless websites on the internet. It has become a pseudo cheat sheet for fans before the players hit the court.

Watson is able to sift through thousands of articles, blogs, expert opinion pieces, and stats to convert into a narrative format that enables any viewer, casual or avid, to look at information before a match, says Corio. It gives some background on the keys for those individual players in their past matches as well as their strengths and weaknesses. It has been really effective at getting people up to speed on what's going to happen or who these players are.

For the more argumentative fans that love to pose hypotheticals, Open Questions is the destination that sparks intriguing tennis conversations. Whether it's a contemporary debate or one that has been raging for decades, artificial intelligence and Watson Discovery are at the heart of this engaging aspect of the app.

Open Questions seeks to enhance iconic sports debates, Corio says. For example, Was Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratilova the greatest tennis rivalry of all time?' Then, it allows fans to interact with their opinions. [This concept] did not rely on match performance over the past six months, unlike some of the other things that we considered.

Ask the Open is an interactive chat function powered by IBM Watson Assistant. For the inquisitive and the curious, this real-time messaging system can help with questions about a certain player's match schedule, the history of the tournament, and other fact-based questions.

Anytime, Anywhere: Mobile App Embraces AR for 3D MatchCast Ask the Open is a question-and-answer chat that offers details and tidbits about the tournament.

In recent years, a

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