Deeper stats, predicted pitches, and live commentary produced by robots in the voice of iconic announcers — it could all be coming to Major League Baseball broadcasts soon. MLB re-upped its partnership with Amazon Web Services on Tuesday. It will continue using machine learning and artificial intelligence to gather data and provide more information to fans. MLB and AWS, the cloud computing arm of Amazon that posted $5.4 billion in revenue last quarter, have worked together since 2014. Amazon helps power Statcast, the high-tech player tracking system that measures every play during a baseball game and produces stats like pitching velocity,… Read More
Nike is going high-tech with its newest retail store concept that opened today in Los Angeles. But don’t expect it to be anything like Amazon Go, another innovative take on brick-and-mortar shopping being rolled out by Amazon that removes cashiers and registers from the physical retail experience. “We are a very emotional brand — we are about human connection and human potential,” Nike Chief Digital Officer Adam Sussman said during a phone interview from Los Angeles on Wednesday. “We don’t want to remove connection with other humans.” Big retailers are using technology in various ways to improve the shopping experience at… Read More
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For any Mariners fans hoping to watch today’s game against Texas, your only option is Facebook. That’s because of a deal Major League Baseball inked in March to stream 25 games on Facebook Watch, the new video platform created by the social media giant last year. It’s part of an experiment that allows MLB to test new ways to air live baseball as more and more sports content is streamed online. It’s also part of Facebook’s push to get more sports video content on its site as it competes with other tech giants — Amazon and its deal with the… Read More
While National Football League teams have made the usual offseason changes aimed at improving their competitive chances next season, the league itself is staying with one big player — Amazon. The NFL announced Thursday that it had reached an agreement to once again partner with Amazon Prime Video for streaming rights to “Thursday Night Football.” The tech giant will stream 11 games (broadcast by FOX) to a global audience during both the 2018 and 2019 seasons. Last season marked the first year of the streaming partnership between the league and Seattle-based Amazon, which took the reigns after Twitter’s one-year shot… Read More
