International Business Machines (IBM) and the Masters have rolled out its latest attempt to provide the most comprehensive way of experiencing the annual tournament with its 2016 Masters application.
A product years in the making, The Masters Golf Tournament app “brings (the user) closer than ever to the beauty and excitement” that the competition has to offer. Features such as shot tracking, live scoring, wearable technology support and 4K video streaming gives a fan extensive coverage of this year’s chase for the green jacket.
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IBM Program Manager and Technology Manager for IBM and the Masters, John Kent, sees the latest app as another achievement in a long line of digital products that the two companies have brought to the game.
“In 1996 we launched the first Masters website, Masters.org, and since then we’ve done year-on-year innovations to bring the Masters to the world to the various digital channels and as those have evolved, we have more than kept up with them,” Kent said.
For 20 years, IBM and the Masters have teamed up to produce the most cutting-edge technology for the tournament, and this year is no different.
“The Masters always wants to be on the leading edge,” Kent said. “The Masters was the first color broadcast, the first HD broadcast, first in 3D streaming, a lot of firsts. But it’s also about getting the masters out to as many people as possible, and wearables is that next sort of place. People are beginning to have apple watches and android wear more in masses, that it makes sense to enhance the app with a lot of watch experience.”
Ultra HD Smart TV owners can download the app to stream the tournament in the highest resolution available. For the fan on-the-go, mobile devices ranging from tablets, smartphones, and smartwatches are constantly fed information to relay up-to-the-minute swings and scores to keep one in the action.
“‘Track’ gives (the fan) the ability to follow the leaders on the leaderboards, watch live video, including the broadcast coverage and enhance the miles of information that some people will like, so you could use that in a second screen manner as well,” Kent said.
By integrating technology such as lasers spread throughout the course to track ball movement, the Masters app plots every round to show competitors progression through the four-day affair.
Furthermore, by using the new universal favoriting feature content will be filtered to stay up-to-date on a fan’s favorite players. The viewer now has the chance to take in stories, statistics and overall coverage of the Masters how they choose.
“For years we had the ability to ‘favorite’ a player on the leaderboards, and bring that leader to the top of the leaderboard so that you could go and check how your (favorite players) have been doing compared to the leaders,” Kent said. “That’s been around, but what hasn’t been around is looking at the sight a little bit holistically and giving you the ability, on any page of the website, to quickly look at a leaderboard that’s really driven by your (favorite players). And if I select a ‘favorite,’ I can filter content, so maybe my news feed has a special component to it that lets me look at articles, photos, videos that are about my (favorite players). So it’s really meant to personalize the experience for the fan a little bit.”
The latest updates to the Masters app are manifestations of a vision to optimize a fan’s involvement to the Augusta invitational. Similar to the excitement every year’s iteration of the tournament brings, the partnership between the organizations will continue to see how they can expand the game for the user.
Kent thinks very highly of the potential for the app to bring users to Augusta in a digital sense. “IBM and the Masters’ main mission with that app is to give you the sense and feel that you are at the Masters and that you have the ultimate Masters experience. So there’s more than can be done to bring you the virtual patron, into the experience. There’s drones, virtual reality, 3D, all of those things are potential opportunities to enhance user experiences in the future.”