LaLiga, the organising body of the top two divisions of Spanish club football, has expanded its partnership with US technology giant Microsoft as it looks to transform the digital experience for fans.
As LaLiga’s global tech and innovation partner, Microsoft will help develop new and leverage existing solutions. One element of the partnership will see Microsoft’s Power BI and Azure services used to streamline stadium operations through innovations in security, and leverage 5G for unified in-stadium experiences.
The company’s Azure Event Hubs, Azure Data Lake, Azure Databricks and Azure Machine Learning services will also provide data-enhanced match coverage and personalised OTT streaming options for fans. New experiences such as augmented reality, virtual reality and 3D replays will also be offered.
Rights-holders, broadcasters and commercial partners will also benefit, with Azure, Dynamics 365, Power BI, SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Machine Learning to enable an enhanced OTT streaming platform that features personalised recommendations and enhanced experiences with relevant content, games and services.
Microsoft Azure will be used by LaLiga for its LaLigaSportsTV OTT platform and Mediacoach platform, which provides match stats and visualization.
LaLiga president Javier Tebas said: “We value Microsoft as our technology and innovation partner and appreciate how they collaborate deeply to build innovative solutions aimed at solving business challenges specific to our industry. We are moving into a new era in which technology will become the center of the fan experience and data insights will power the next stage of global growth.”
Jean-Philippe Courtois, executive vice-president and president of global sales, marketing and operations at Microsoft, added: “We are thrilled to expand our partnership with LaLiga as it makes further bold moves to deepen engagement with its hundreds of millions of fans, while bringing new business models to market with Microsoft cloud and AI capabilities. Microsoft is proud to help accelerate LaLiga’s digital innovation and empower exciting new business opportunities in the sports and entertainment industries through LaLiga’s technology portfolio.”
LaLiga said the expansion of its deal with Microsoft is key to the growth and development of LaLiga Tech, through which it will package its full range of existing technologies into a commercial offering for the sports industry.
Image: LaLiga
