Invention during Disruption: The Infosys Tennis Platform Journey Continues

Raghavan Subramanian

On March 13, when I set up my home office, Roland-Garros 2020 seemed so near. In my mind, my team and I were already there: a few metres away from the legendary centre court. I could feel the excitement of thousands there, I could hear that sound of the ball piercing the racquet string, and I couldn’t wait for fans to experience what we had in store for them.

But as March 13 turned to April 13, the new normal had sunk in. Soon it was announced that Roland-Garros would take place in September. I knew that in this adversity we had the opportunity to go back to the imagination board and create something even more meaningful. Neelesh, Rohan, Rohit and Siva, my core leadership team and I, sensed an incredible opportunity to create "Digital innovations" for the event that could get disrupted by the Pandemic. Luckily for us, the Infosys Tennis Platform was built to be open-source, which gave us the ability to pivot in potentially new directions.

The next few months were frantic, as our teams in different parts of the globe would try to answer the call for increasing digital consumption. While we struggled sometimes to find a common calendar slot, what was never a struggle was going the extra mile when it mattered: because we had a common purpose. When tennis, and Roland-Garros returned, we wanted everyone in it to return to a new, more empowering experience.

With the rapid pace of innovation made possible by technology it is difficult sometimes to stay focused and pursuing the right innovations. A few things stand out from our recent experiences of remotely collaborating with the French Tennis Federation (FFT) team to build a digitally-powered RG 20.

1. Why you’re building is as important as what you’re building. When a crisis emerges, there is a plethora of opportunities that emerges in one area. In our case, there is a huge boom in digital consumption. It’s very tempting to think that everything with a use case will find scale and success. For us, we had many obvious solutions to explore such as web VR or gamification.

While these are high on coolness credentials, the more meaningful solutions come from simpler questions. Like how can a journalist possibly cover 47 matches in a day at Roland-Garros? One way would be if you had readily available AI-generated match insights. Then you, the journalist, could validate these insights with a video analysis of the key match moments. After which, you’d find your angle and write your story.

 That’s Infosys AI-Assisted Journalism for you and it’s already a game-changer for the Le Quotidien team of Roland-Garros. The journalists can choose from multiple insights focused on stats, shot placements, Stroke Analysis or performance on various rally lengths; all their match graphics are generated by AI, so their writers can focus on a richer story told with data.

Similarly, We asked ourselves, how could we help the players analyze their own and opponent’s match performance in a much faster way. Infosys AI videos in the RG players app does just that by slicing and dicing a match video and presenting it to the player in multiple dimensions for analyzing the performance through the prism of key statistics, rally length or strokes played. The app transforms the players and coach’s experience through this video analytical platform that presents last 3 years of tournament data ready for their analysis & consumption.

With Automation being at the core of Digitisation lately, we challenged ourselves to push the boundaries to see if we could go beyond the mundane , repetitive tasks and automate a highly creative task such as Match Highlights generation that really requires high levels of skill and domain knowledge in the area of sports. That’s how AI Highlights solution was brought to life. The solution is powered by multiple AI and ML technologies such as Open CV, PyLoudAnalysis, Tesseract etc that help us pick the best mix of shots that are most elegant or played at crucial moments , captures the crowd excitement and player reactions to narrate the story of the match in a short duration. 

2. Data is not actually about the numbers, it’s about what purpose you give it. The same data set can hold different relevance for different users. That’s one of the advantages of having built the Infosys Tennis Platform as a set of generic micro-services to be used across multiple applications. Take for instance, something as simple as tennis statistics. Infosys Stats enables the numbers to be sorted by significance, and this same core powers three different applications. For players, this sorting of stats, when mixed with video analytics, creates a powerful way to find out which area of their game they need to focus on.. For fans, the same sorting mechanism helps them see the match in a new light.It helps them learn about the stats that had an influence on the outcome of the match. For journalists, this sorting provides a new perspective on turning points of the match. Again, to make these different data avatars possible, you must have empathy into what the user needs, and go deeper into the context. In our case, it’s tennis, and more specifically, tennis at Roland-Garros. We get obsessed sometimes with questions like, are fewer aces served on clay courts than grass courts? If so, why? This leads us down many interesting rabbit holes.

3. Tennis or business, sometimes even what’s additive can be innovative.

Sometimes we get so lost in the glittering lure of what’s new. We often forget that what’s now is already two steps away from being what’s next. Like the Infosys Match Centre. It made its debut at Roland-Garros 2019 on the RG website. Match Centre technologies such as MatchBeats have provided a completely new way to follow the game, point by point.This year, along with adding new features such as Rally Analysis & Stroke Summary we have also added ‘Automated insights’ for each match .

These are AI discovered textual insights generated by NLG engine that narrates the crucial points for each set. So with the at-home fan experience gaining prominence this year, it was but natural that the Match Centre made its way to the RG Fan App. It’s additive and yet it’s innovative. The app is primarily thought of as a medium of convenience for actions such as ticketing, or draws, schedules, results and live-scores. But in today’s age, insight itself can be as functional or as engaging as you make it to be. So if you’re sitting on a host of applications, revisit them and cast them in a new mold. The next innovation might just be hiding there.

Last, but not least, never forget that the product is actually the people and the passion behind it. There are so many stories from the war-room. To highlight just a few, I'm inspired by the bottom-line shown by some young and new-entrants, women who have toddlers and people who have lost their close-ones to COVID. I'm proud to be a part of this team. This year, we are proud that the Infosys Tennis Platform has evolved to serve 15 innovations for fans, players and media. But what we are even more delighted with is that this was made possible with the collaboration of different teams, working tirelessly in tough times. This is something we are calling #15Love: the spirit of innovation. I’m already dreaming up the technologies that could get us to #30Love with the Infosys Tennis Platform two years from now, but let me not get too ahead of myself. For now, #15Love is extraordinary and kudos to the Infosys and FFT teams who made it happen.

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Behind the #15Love Experience: This blog series celebrates the spirit of collaboration and innovation that went into shaping the Roland-Garros 2020 digital landscape. Follow Infosys on LinkedIn to hear stories of passion and purpose from the teams at Infosys and French Tennis Federation (FFT), as they talk about the next normal in experiences, partnerships, technology and branding.