DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga and Amazon Web Services expand partnership

The Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced an expanded, multi-year collaboration to build upon their game-changing work together, which began in 2020. The DFL has been a driving force for innovation in international professional football for many years and AWS is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS will continue as the Official Technology Provider of the DFL in the long run, with an added focus, as the Official Generative AI Provider of the DFL, on utilising generative AI to accelerate innovation.

Under the expanded agreement, new projects have been identified to further drive innovation and transformation along the entire DFL value chain. The projects are focused on three core areas for the DFL: fan experience (e.g. automated translation, personalisation and localisation), media production (e.g. use of cloud infrastructure in media production and the moving image archive) and data services (e.g. automated recognition of match events, applying the statistics portfolio developed for the Bundesliga to other leagues).

The announcement was made today during SportsInnovation, a sports technology trade fair in Düsseldorf, Germany. At the event, the DFL subsidiary Sportec Solutions, in collaboration with AWS, showcases an innovative approach to enhancing the fan experience, demonstrating how they leverage generative AI and cutting-edge large language models (LLMs) to create dynamic, real-time match commentary in written form and in multiple languages. The commentary is tailored to viewers through a personalised feed during the broadcast.

DFL CEO Steffen Merkel said: “The collaboration between DFL and AWS sets the standard in terms of innovation in global football. The focus is always on additional benefits for media partners, fans and the DFL itself. We are very pleased to continue this successful partnership in the long term with the world’s largest cloud provider, including leveraging the potential of generative AI to accelerate innovation for German professional football.”

Matt Garman, Senior Vice President, Sales, Marketing, and Global Services at AWS said: “We are thrilled to deepen our partnership with the DFL, a leader in sports innovation. Four years ago, we set out to help the DFL leverage technology to connect with fans on a personal level, unlock new statistical insights, and transform internal and broadcast operations. The work we are demonstrating today at SportsInnovation lays the foundation for a more personalized viewing experience for Bundesliga fans around the world in the language of their choice.”

Record of success since 2020

Since 2020, the DFL and AWS have had the most extensive collaboration between a football league and a technology company, bringing together their expertise in sports, media, data analytics, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). Many successful projects have been executed. For example, the development of Bundesliga Match Facts powered by AWS, which has grown into a comprehensive portfolio of real-time advanced analytics, based on official live match data.

Automated media production and global distribution in the cloud:

With media partners broadcasting matches in more than 200 countries, the DFL and AWS continuously innovate to make it as easy as possible to deliver great content to fans around the world. To supplement the distribution of the international feed via satellite and fibre, the DFL offers cloud-based streaming to meet the increasing demand for over-the-top (OTT) content. Thanks to automation, today, all 306 Bundesliga 2 matches are available with English-language graphics such as team lineups and scores, as well as Bundesliga Match Facts. As a result, the total number of international broadcasts of Bundesliga 2 matches has more than doubled and the reach has almost quadrupled.

Optimising the Bundesliga digital archive:

Another ground breaking advancement, resulting from the collaboration, was improving the discoverability of content in the DFL Media Hub, the world's largest, and constantly growing, digital football archive. AI-generated metadata allows users to search for content in more than 210,000 hours of video footage more efficiently. The Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 clubs, national and international media partners, as well as other media, agencies and sponsors, benefit from fast and easy access to content.

Personalisation of the Bundesliga app:

AWS has also played a pivotal role in the personalisation function of the Bundesliga app. The app uses Amazon Personalize as its recommendation engine to dynamically arrange content that caters to the personal preferences of each individual fan. This has led to a higher watch count for videos, an increased retention rate and sessions lasting 17% longer.

Developer productivity:

Bundesliga was an early adopter of Amazon Q Developer, AWS’s generative AI-powered assistant for the entire lifecycle of building and managing applications. Q Developer provides a great speed advantage, and game changing features for reasoning tasks that rise above just writing code like the feature development capability and Q Code Transformation. Q Developer has unlocked new levels of developer productivity for the DFL.