Wimbledon and IBM Push Tennis into the AI Era with Match Chat and Catch Me Up

Wimbledon is once again stepping into the future — not just on the grass courts, but behind the scenes of the digital experience. In collaboration with IBM, the All-England Club is using generative AI to reshape how fans interact with The Championships, delivering deeper insights, real-time engagement, and personalized content on an unprecedented scale.

 In 2024, the debut of a feature called Catch Me Up marked a significant shift in the way fans consumed tennis updates. Built using IBM’s Granite large language model and its Watsonx platform, Catch Me Up generated pre- and post-match player summaries directly on Wimbledon’s app and website. These summaries included performance analysis, predictions, and match highlights — all customized to each user’s favorite players and location, based on their myWimbledon profile.

 The idea was simple: make it easier to follow the tournament as it unfolded, especially for fans juggling multiple matches or time zones. In an era of information overload, Catch Me Up allowed Wimbledon to scale its storytelling, including coverage of often-overlooked matches like those in the wheelchair division. While the ambition was applauded, some fans noted factual inaccuracies in the AI-generated content, prompting IBM and the All-England Club to take action.

 Fast forward to 2025, and that feedback has informed the development of Match Chat — a smarter, more interactive digital assistant that goes beyond passive content delivery. Rather than receiving static summaries, users can now ask custom or pre-written questions through the Wimbledon website or app, and Match Chat will respond with real-time, AI-generated analysis. Whether fans want to know who’s converting more break points or which player is performing better in a match, Match Chat delivers answers with clarity and context.

 What sets Match Chat apart is its integration of IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate platform with a new layer of editorial governance. The feature includes watsonx.governance, a toolkit designed to ensure the AI’s output is accurate, appropriate, and aligned with Wimbledon’s standards. Human oversight also plays a role, with a team in place to monitor the assistant and validate its insights throughout the tournament.

 Alongside this new feature, IBM has enhanced its Likelihood to Win tool, a predictive model that now accounts not only for player statistics and historical data but also for real-time momentum and expert opinion. It adds another layer of intelligence to the fan experience, turning raw numbers into meaningful forecasts.

 This direction reflects broader trends in how fans engage with live sport. Research from IBM and Morning Consult shows that over half of global tennis fans believe AI will improve the way they follow the game. They want real-time updates, personalized content, and smart summaries — and they’re already showing the appetite for it. Nearly half of surveyed fans engage with tennis content on a daily or weekly basis, while a third use more than one device at a time when watching matches. Younger fans are embracing multi-screen experiences, diving deeper into the game beyond the primary broadcast.

 With Match Chat, IBM and Wimbledon aren’t just responding to those habits — they’re helping shape them. What began with AI-generated stories in 2024 has evolved into a full-scale, real-time assistant, bringing fans closer to the action while maintaining editorial standards and trust. It’s a powerful example of how tradition and technology can coexist in modern sport. At Wimbledon, where heritage is sacred and storytelling is everything, artificial intelligence is no longer just a backend tool — it’s part of the show.

Jake Scudder

Journalist - topics of tennis