While artificial intelligence (AI) has arrived strongly this year in WimbledonLine judges will keep their spots in the traditional tennis tournament in London, at least for the time being.
Less than two weeks before the Grand Slam takes place on the lawn (July 3-16), the All England Club, tournament organizer, and IBM giants on Wednesday revealed the new technologies that will be used during the Games.
One of them, generated through artificial intelligence, will comment on the best moments of the matches on the competition website and the official app.
Another will use the technology to determine the difficulty of each player’s bracket from the singles through to the finals.
Year after year, Wimbledon attracts millions of spectators, all of whom are fans of the competition and the tradition of the tournament, with all tennis players dressed all in white, as required.
“Wimbledon is the oldest Grand Slam tournament. Our tradition goes back to 1877 and that’s one of the main reasons people keep coming.”
“But without technological innovation, we cannot stay at the top of tennis,” he adds.
The Australian Open and the US Open, among others, have been using electronic arbitration since 2021 and the ATP announced in April that the line judging numbers that cannot be separated from tennis would be gradually replaced from 2025, in order to “Improve accuracy and consistency between tournaments.”
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It is impossible to replace McEnroe
This season, at Wimbledon, Bill Jenks has promised that line umpires will continue to work matches, but he’s not guaranteeing that will continue in the future.
“Line refereeing technology is evolving. Since 2007 we have used the ‘Eyes of the Hawk’ system (a video feature where players can call for help on a limited number of occasions on questionable balls) and it works very well. Who knows what might happen in the future?” , warns Jenks, who does not rule out the possibility that a single AI will start arbitration in an indisputable way.
For Chris Clements, Head of Digital at the All England Club, advances in technology have changed the way society consumes sport, at a time when there has been a buzz around artificial intelligence since the launch of tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney.
“Wimbledon, when we were kids, was the time when the whole family got together in front of the TV in the living room,” he recalls. “Now, it is less frequent. We need to find another way to attract the new generation of Wimbledon fans.”
Now is the time to “collect massive amounts of data and turn it into information that can be shared with fans around the world through digital platforms,” explains Kevin Farrar, IBM’s UK and Ireland Sports Sponsorship Officer.
The goal is to use this AI (which generates sports commentary) later for the entire game, for categories that don’t usually benefit, such as masters, youth, and wheelchair tennis. However, this is not a matter of completely shunning human intervention.
“Replacing John McEnroe’s comments … is impossible! Man must always be present, it is only a matter of complementing him. The challenge is to find the balance between tradition and innovation.”
