A new way to play: Digital innovations on court, and at home

In the eyes of tennis fans, and indeed the general public, Roland-Garros (also called The French Open) is an unmissable sporting event that enjoys immense prestige. The 2019 tournament attracted more than 520,000 spectators and was broadcast in 222 countries, confirming the tournament’s status as a first-class international sporting event. This year it runs from September 21, 2020 to October 11, 2020.

These are pandemic times and technology is enabling fans around the world keep up with the latest on the games they are passionate about. Towards this, Bengaluru-based Infosys and the French Tennis Federation have announced tech innovations set to hit the courts at this year’s French Open, as part of the second year of the strategic technology partnership. Leveraging Infosys’ technology platform, this year’s tournament will deliver a digitally enhanced experience by facilitating virtual experiences and greater access for fans, better training, and analysis among players and coaches, as well as storytelling support for journalists. Intense remote collaboration was required for this, relying heavily on cloud-based services and an agile, innovative approach by both organisations.

Pravin Rao, COO, Infosys, said, “From the all-new player app AI features to the enhanced Match Centre, we have leveraged powerful technologies and toolsets across the board to ensure fans, players, coaches have the best experience possible, wherever they are.”

Infosys will power the remote fan experience on the digital properties of the tournament bringing courtside to the fan’s homes in immersive ways. The redesigned Match Centre will provide tennis fans with innumerable ways of visualising a match. Fans can dive into MatchBeats for point-by-point play, stroke-summary to understand the go-to-strokes of players, rally-analysis to look at how tactics change, and CourtVision to understand serve, return, and rally based insights. The all-new user interface, brought together by Infosys digital design arm Brilliant Basics, aims to appeal to a broader range of fans by providing accessible and understandable match insights.

New for 2020, Infosys is powering an all-new mobile and tablet app experience for coaches and players at Roland-Garros. The app incorporates sophisticated and fast match analysis, rally replay, stroke analysis, and on-device video highlight editing and production capabilities—powered by Infosys AI and enabled by a cloud powered architecture. There is insight-driven journalism and intelligent post-match highlights enabled by AI. There is also AI Highlights that helps to create highlights for every match in a completely automated way.