How IBM Used Agentic AI to Transform the Wimbledon 2025 Experience

If you were watching Wimbledon in 2025, you weren’t just witnessing the world’s greatest tennis; you were also experiencing how IBM used agentic AI to quietly transform the way we engage with the game. Not in the way the grass was cut or the players dressed; those timeless traditions remain sacred. But in how you watched, asked, and understood what unfolded on Centre Court, everything had changed.

Suddenly, the stats on your screen weren’t just numbers; they were stories. Whether you shouted at the TV or whispered a curious thought under your breath, AI was right there with you, responding, interpreting, and even anticipating your next question. It felt like an invisible panel of experts was watching along, just for you.

Unfolding quietly behind the scenes, it was Agentic AI in action, which is marking a subtle yet profound turning point in the fusion of tradition and technology on Centre Court.

Key Takeaways

How IBM Used Agentic AI to Transform the Wimbledon 2025 Experience

Let’s break that down without the jargon. Agentic AI isn’t just smart; it’s situationally proactive. I don’t wait to be told what to do. It observes, reasons, and acts independently, much like a human assistant might. Think of it as an AI that can carry a conversation, respond in context, and pivot when the situation changes.

IBM’s1 platform Watsonx is a powerful AI platform that combines Granite LLMs, which are IBM’s own large language models. The AI had been trained on years of Wimbledon-specific editorial content, commentary, and linguistic quirks. So when it spoke, it didn’t just know tennis. It knew Wimbledon.

For the first time, Match Chat, an AI agent, was introduced on the official Wimbledon app to answer users’ questions during the match. LLM was trained to answer prebuilt prompts or any user questions. It could tell you how Djokovic’s current return game compares to his 2022 form, and do it in a tone that feels like it came straight from a BBC broadcast booth. All this led to more user engagement across the tennis community globally.

Background: IBM and AELTC Collaboration

IBM’s relationship with the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) stretches back more than three decades. What began as a technology partnership to modernize scoring and statistics has grown into a showcase of how cutting-edge computing can enrich one of the world’s most traditional sporting events. Together, IBM and AELTC have steadily introduced innovations that enhance the Wimbledon experience while preserving the character and prestige of the Championships.

Real-World AI Implementation

At Wimbledon 2025, IBM’s Agentic AI moved from concept to reality, powering Match Chat for real-time Q&A, creating instant highlight reels, helping journalists with live insights, and giving fans in the stands, at home, or on the go a personalized, conversational experience. It proved that AI isn’t just data-driven; it’s story-driven, making sports more interactive, immersive, and human.

Past Innovations at Wimbledon

Over the years, IBM has introduced a series of technology firsts at Wimbledon. From the earliest online scoreboards and digital archives to predictive analytics for player performance and real-time Slamtracker tools, the aim has always been to bring fans closer to the action.

Cloud computing, AI-driven highlights, and natural language summaries have already established standards for transforming data into captivating narratives. These efforts laid the foundation for the move toward truly interactive AI in 2025.

Fan Engagement Focus With Agentic AI

For the 2025 Championships, IBM and AELTC are pursuing a delicate balance: innovation without losing tradition. The primary goals are

• Deepening fan engagement by providing new & existing users with more conversational, real-time experiences.
• Delivering immediate insights & Predictions for real-time statistics and expert opinion
• Preserving Wimbledon’s heritage while presenting it through modern digital formats.

Agentic AI is at the center of this ambition, turning raw match data into dialogue that feels as if it could have come from a seasoned commentator.

Key Technologies Behind Wimbledon 2025

IBM Watsonx and Agentic AI

Watsonx serves as the backbone of the IBM AI framework. It provides the training, deployment, and governance capabilities needed for safe, scalable use of large language models (LLMs). Within watsonx, Agentic AI is orchestrated to interpret questions, retrieve context, and generate responses aligned with Wimbledon’s tone.

IBM Granite LLM

The Granite LLM family underpins the linguistic capabilities of the agents. These models have been fine-tuned for tennis-specific language and the editorial style that Wimbledon fans recognize. This ensures that responses are not only factually accurate but also stylistically faithful.

Red Hat OpenShift

To handle global demand during the Championships, IBM relies on Red Hat OpenShift. It provides the scalability and resilience required to run AI applications in a hybrid cloud setup, ensuring uninterrupted performance even at peak traffic moments.

Transformative AI Features at Wimbledon 2025

1. Match Chat: A Real-Time AI Assistant

The headline feature this year is Match Chat, an interactive AI assistant available through the Wimbledon app and website. Fans can pose natural questions such as

• “Who has converted more break points?”
• “Who is performing better right now?”

Behind the scenes, multiple AI agents collaborate to analyze live data streams, apply context, and generate answers that echo Wimbledon’s editorial voice. Importantly, the system maintains awareness of match dynamics, so the insights evolve as the play unfolds.

For high-profile matches, the same conversational analysis remains accessible after the final point through IBM Slamtracker. This allows fans to revisit the flow of a match with the same depth and clarity they experienced live.

2. Likelihood to Win: Turning Momentum into a Visual Language

If you’ve ever felt that a match was “slipping away” before the scoreboard reflected it, AI was designed to capture that very intuition. IBM’s Enhanced Likelihood to Win tool transformed momentum into something measurable and visible.

AI powered the system by processing live match data, player histories, and situational factors like serve success or double faults, updating win probabilities point by point. Each calculation instantly translated into a dynamic visualization, showing how momentum swung with every ace, rally, or unforced error.

Beyond enhancing the viewer’s experience, AI scaled coverage in ways humans alone could not. It automatically generated fast, editorial-quality insights across hundreds of matches, including wheelchair tennis and contests featuring lesser-known players. This democratized coverage ensured every match had expert-level context and a clear narrative for fans, regardless of who was on the court.

Upskilling Pathways: What You Should Be Learning Today

If you’re a professional in sports, media, UX, data, or event technology, Wimbledon 2025 is a wake-up call. These tools are real, scalable, and industry-ready.

Here’s what you should be investing time in:

Generative AI & Large Language Models

• Learn how LLMs work (transformers, attention, embeddings)
• Understand prompt tuning and fine-tuning
• Explore tools like OpenAI, Hugging Face, IBM Watsonx

Data Engineering

• Work with both structured and unstructured data, enabling efficient data engineering.
• Practice ETL with video, text, and audio.
• Understand architectures like data lakes and lakehouses.

Multimodal AI

• Learn how AI integrates video + audio + text (e.g. with CLIP, BLIP, or Flamingo models)
• Build sample projects that auto-caption highlights or extract crowd sentiment from audio

AI Ethics and Governance

• Study responsible AI frameworks (e.g. IBM’s, Microsoft’s, and the EU AI Act)
• Understand transparency, explainability, and fairness metrics.

UX and Content Design for AI

• Learn how to present AI outputs intuitively
• Use Figma, Canva, or design systems to build mockups
• Focus on readability, flow, and user trust

AI in Operation

• Understand how to bring AI into daily workflows
• Collaborate with editorial, tech, ops, and legal teams
• Study case studies of successful AI rollouts (like Wimbledon, Bundesliga, ESPN Edge)

Agentic AI at Wimbledon 2025

• See how IBM used Agentic AI-based systems to enhance live tennis coverage
• Deliver contextual answers, predictive insights, and real-time storytelling
•  Focus on spectator engagement, personalization, and seamless AI-human interaction

Conclusion

Wimbledon 2025 wasn’t just a showcase of elite tennis; it was a defining moment in the convergence of AI and sports. Central to this transformation was the introduction of the AI-powered match chat feature, which drove a groundbreaking 300% surge in viewership. With AI delivering real-time insights and expert-level answers, the traditional reliance on human sports analysts was reimagined. Fans were empowered to interact directly with the game, gaining immediate clarity and context without needing an intermediary.

This seamless integration of agentic AI didn’t just enhance the viewing experience; it redefined it. By combining adaptive intelligence with natural language interaction, IBM ushered in a new era where every fan becomes their own expert, and every moment of the game is enriched with personalized, data-driven storytelling.

As AI takes center stage in sports, Wimbledon 2025 stands as a bold example of what’s possible when technology is not just behind the scenes but part of the action.

Learn to Build AI Agents Like the Pros

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FAQs

Q1: What is agentic AI in this context?

Agentic AI refers to AI that doesn’t just respond passively—it observes, reasons, and acts proactively (like human assistants) to generate contextually appropriate outputs.

Q2: How did IBM’s Match Chat differ from traditional chatbots?

Unlike basic chatbots, Match Chat used agents that understand match context, pivot dynamically, and respond with domain-aware style (e.g. Wimbledon voice).

Q3: What infrastructure supported this system at scale?

IBM used Watsonx for model training and governance, Granite LLMs for specialization, and Red Hat OpenShift to scale globally and maintain resilience.

Q4: What was the user impact of deploying agentic AI at Wimbledon?

Fans experienced heightened engagement: they could ask questions live, receive explanations and narratives, making each match more interactive and personalized.

References

IBM