How AI is Revolutionizing the Sports Industry: 8 Takeaways from CES 2025

Not all fans consume sports the same way—AI tailors experiences, delivering highlights, deep analysis, and customized content based on individual preferences.

• “We think there’s this really incredible opportunity for fans to become true experts, more so than they ever have been able to before, without having to devote their entire life to learning about a particular sport. Whether you’re a new fan to a sport or you’ve been watching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for 20 years. That same user experience allows people to have different interactions and ways of becoming a better fan.” – Ryan Foutty, Head of Consumer Partnerships, Perplexity
• “Gen Z and Gen Alpha consume sports differently. They expect content to be short-form, interactive, and immediately available. AI is helping us bridge that gap by automating content creation, repackaging highlights instantly, and making sports consumption more dynamic.” – Samira Panah Bakhtiar, GM, AWS

Sports engagement is no longer limited to live games—AI enables fans to stay connected before, during, and after matches through interactive content, social conversations, and personalized updates.

• “For us, it’s about moving from a one-size-fits-all broadcast to an interactive, highly personalized experience that’s really responsive to fandom as it’s expressed at the individual level. AI allows us to repackage content in ways that are more personalized and relevant to different audiences, whether that’s short-form clips for social or deep-dive analysis for superfans. A lot of fandom exists in your group text with your friends, right? It exists in the way that you’re bantering on Reddit threads with fellow fans of a given sport or athlete. [There is] an opportunity [to] extend that trust and relationship we have on the broadcast side.” –Melody Hildebrandt, CTO, FOX

Just as social media transformed athlete-fan engagement, AI is helping teams and players build stronger, more personalized connections with their audiences.

• “AWS works with Formula One to be able to ingest over a million multimodal points of data during every race. And with that data, they’re able to do very interesting things associated to bringing the fan experience…we teamed up with them to be able to create the first generative AI inspired trophy. And so they took all this data, and they put it out to their super fans. Fans had an opportunity to interact and provide design recommendations, and then ultimately a design was selected. [A] human crafted the trophy. But it was such a unique experience to be able to bring that fan base closer to Formula One” – Samira Panah Bakhtiar, GM, AWS

AI enables real-time content creation, from instant highlight reels to personalized game recaps, making sports media more dynamic than ever.

• AI is allowing us to take metadata associated with the plays, the players, and the broadcast itself and use it to enhance how fans engage with the game. We partnered with the NFL to be able to do things like Next-Gen Stats. Most recently, we launched an ML tackle probability feature, and the whole point there is to allow the fan to get closer and more intimate with the game—to go beyond just watching and start engaging with the strategy and decision-making in new ways.” Samira Panah Bakhtiar, GM, AWS
• “What if you could ask your TV, ‘Show me all the Hail Mary plays from this season?’ and instantly get a highlight reel tailored to you? You can actually now do that natural language query against Fox Sports coverage and get the clip from Colin Coward.” – Melody Hildebrandt, CTO, FOX

AI-powered tools are supercharging sports analysts and commentators, providing instant insights that enrich broadcasts.

• “The integration of AI into sports isn’t merely a technological upgrade—it’s a cultural evolution. It’s transforming every aspect of how we experience, produce, and engage with sports. Recently, we launched Prime Insights, which allows for increased information relative to that metadata that’s been able to be extracted for commentators to use it to enhance the broadcast, but also for the fan themselves to be able to use it in interesting ways.” – Samira Panah Bakhtiar, GM, AWS
• “Something like a quarter of fans of Formula One are new in the last four years, and people are still learning the sport. It’s a very technical sport, and you might see some event happen, say, a crash, or a team switches tires in the middle of that race. And we can actually, via a hub or second screen device experience on Perplexity, allow you to ask questions about it, or actually correctly anticipate what you might want to know and give you that information.” – Ryan Foutty, Head of Consumer Partnerships, Perplexity

From expanding global markets to creating new monetization opportunities, AI is driving business growth for leagues and teams.

• “There’s an issue with language and translation in international sports. Some very interesting companies are working with AI-powered instantaneous translation for both broadcasts and fan engagement. For example, La Liga recently updated their app with WSC Sports, allowing for instantaneous highlight clips and stories that are also automatically translated into multiple languages. That’s a huge cost-saving for broadcasters and leagues, who normally have to send production teams all over the world.” – Shari Glazer, Kalos Labs & Tampa Bay Buccaneers

AI is bringing digital innovation to live sports, making game days more seamless and interactive.

• “I think some things are starting to be integrated now, like security, facial recognition, crowd management, in terms of monitoring queues at the bathrooms or concession stands, to be able to have the crowd flow be more efficient and manage inventory in places that are visited more or less than others. We’re using AI at the Buccaneers for customer service and ticket sales, and also things like surprise and delight for fans, where AI-powered systems can automatically send upgrades or giveaways based on fan engagement.” – Shari Glazer, Kalos Labs & Tampa Bay Buccaneers

• “This will be the first Olympics where AI doesn’t just provide stats. AI-powered predictive analytics can tell you the probability of an upset in real time, suggest historical comparisons, or even surface AI-generated insights tailored to what a fan wants to know. This will fundamentally change how people follow and understand Olympic events. The Olympics are [also] one of the most valuable events for advertisers, and AI is going to make it even more powerful. AI-powered targeting will allow sponsors to customize ad experiences based on individual viewing habits. Instead of blanket advertising, AI will enable brands to serve highly relevant, real-time campaigns based on what fans are engaging with.” – Samira Panah Bakhtiar, GM, AWS