ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, IBM
(NYSE: IBM) is announcing an updated, customized experience
powered by IBM Watson artificial intelligence (AI) technology in
the ESPN Fantasy App designed to make the game more engaging for
fantasy football players. New this year, IBM is launching
customizable and more simplified projections and player comparisons
in the Trade Assistant with Watson
tool. Building on last season's successful launch of Trade
Assistant with Watson, the tool
now allows ESPN fantasy football players to customize trade
preferences, get personalized trade recommendations and view
data-driven metrics to transparently explain suggested
trades.
Customizing the Trades
To improve the game for
fantasy players of all levels and skillsets, IBM worked with ESPN
to create a more customizable, transparent and understandable
experience within the ESPN Fantasy App. Trade Assistant with
IBM Watson was initially introduced to reduce the
complexities of fantasy football trades by using AI to suggest
trades and to assess the fairness and value of a proposed trade.
Now within the app, fantasy players can personalize their trade
packages by identifying Players of Interest (Watch List), Players
to Trade, Players NOT to Trade, and Positions to Trade.
Also new this year, Trade Assistant can offer "No Brainer" Trade
Suggestions, which include basic trade recommendations designed for
newer fantasy football players who may not be aware of glaring
issues with their lineups, such as missing positions or too few
players on their roster. In addition, Trade Assistant will focus on
"1 for 1" or "2 for 2" trades, meaning trading one player for one
other player, instead of more complex trade suggestions. These
improvements are the result of IBM and ESPN working together to
address user feedback and to engage new and less experienced
fantasy players over the past few years.
More Data
This season Trade Assistant will offer more
data and analytics within the app to provide a more transparent
explanation for suggested trades, so fantasy players can better
understand why certain trades are recommended. Within the
experience, Trade Assistant will now provide a Weekly Scoring
Average that compares an individual's team to the rest of the teams
in their league, showing pre- and post-trade values within the app.
The app will also offer insights into "fair trades" and the "boom
percentage" pre-and post-trades, meaning Trade Assistant will show
whether the players in the trade are more likely to "boom" (play
better than projected) or "bust" (play worse than projected) after
a proposed trade.
Using IBM Watson Discovery's natural language processing (NLP)
capabilities, Trade Assistant is based on trustworthy AI and is
able to suggest trades, as well as provide additional insights by
extracting, translating and reviewing inputs on football players
and teams, such as player stats and experts' sentiment from various
sources, including ESPN.com, news articles, blogs, and podcast
transcripts. With IBM Watson Studio's AutoAI capabilities and the
IBM Research AI Fairness 360
toolkit, ESPN can now streamline the process of constructing and
training models, while providing in-depth analysis into why certain
decisions were made. Within Trade Assistant, which runs on IBM
Cloud, ESPN is also able to address bias or unfair predictions
along selected attributes, such as a player's team.
Insights on IBM Cloud
For the 2021 season, IBM is
continuing Player Insights with Watson to help fantasy players better
understand matchups, analyze players' boom or bust chances, and
assess the impact of injuries on their rosters. The redeployed
Player Insights with Watson builds
on features launched last year that offered player comparison and
share capabilities.
The technologies behind both Player Insights with Watson and Trade Assistant with Watson use AI running on a hybrid cloud
architecture to help improve the experience of playing fantasy
football. These features are built on containerized apps using Red
Hat OpenShift, and run on IBM Cloud. IBM developers creating these
features are able to quickly build and securely deploy new
solutions in any environment, due to the flexibility of the
cloud.
"IBM's technologies help to make ESPN Fantasy Football more
interactive for our fans and differentiated from other products,"
said Chris Jason, senior director,
product management, Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution,
Fantasy Sports. "Players of all levels can use the IBM Trade
Assistant and Player Insights tools to make more informed decisions
and better compete against their friends, which creates a more
engaging experience."
"Our innovations within the ESPN Fantasy App reflect the work we
do with clients all over the world. IBM Watson is helping make
sense of complex data, and creating interactive, customizable
experiences using AI and cloud technology. The same technologies in
the Fantasy Football app that explain trades can also help
streamline complexities, improve workflows and engage customers for
businesses of all sizes," said Noah
Syken, Vice President of Sports & Entertainment
Partnerships, IBM.
The new features will be integrated into the ESPN Fantasy App
(mobile iOS and Android). For more information on IBM Watson,
visit https://www.ibm.com/cloud/watson-discovery. To play
ESPN Fantasy Football and experience Trade Assistant and Player
Insights with IBM Watson, sign up at ESPN.com/FFL or
download the ESPN Fantasy App from the App Store
and Android stores.
CONTACT:
Zoë Hoffmann
zoe.hoffmann@ibm.com
Red Hat, the Red Hat logo, and OpenShift are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the
U.S. and other countries.
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SOURCE IBM