Stats Perform partners with Veritone for AI-powered voice commentary

Veritone has formed a strategic partnership with Stats Perform to provide real-time play-by-play, pre-game, in-game and post-game updates.

Veritone is a provider of enterprise AI solutions. The partnership will combine the company’s synthetic voice AI technology and Stats Perform’s Opta sports data to bring localised, AI voice capabilities to content creators, media organisations, brand agencies, teams, leagues and betting platforms around the globe.

“Generating lifelike AI voice commentary for sports is the natural next step for the industry,” said Stats Perform chief revenue officer Steve Xeller.

“Thanks to Veritone technology, our users will now have the ability to create custom voices in partnership with beloved broadcasters, in multiple languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian and Arabic, and incorporate these lifelike voice options into stats reporting to reach wider global audiences with localized content.

“This is particularly important for those who do not read and speak the host-distributed language; as well as those with visual impairments or disabilities.”

Dating back over 26 years, Stats Perform’s Opta data provides the deepest and most trusted historical sports data to power interactive content and create engaging experiences for fans.

Veritone Voice, which supports both text-to-speech and speech-to-speech AI modalities, will enhance Stats Perform’s offerings with a wide range of capabilities, including:

• Enabling voice-enhanced commentary for automated match previews, recaps, player bios and play-by-play
• Empowering sports fans to choose the audio content that fits their preferences
• Reaching global audiences in their native languages to foster inclusion in sports reporting
• Providing access to sports reporting for those who are visually impaired or have reading disabilities

“Veritone’s partnership with Stats Perform is truly a tipping point within the sports tech and AI industries,” said Veritone president, Ryan Steelberg. “This is the first-time synthetic voice will be deployed in sports reporting at scale. It takes storytelling in sports to a new level and dramatically transforms fan engagement.”

OneFootball, a football media company with over 100 million fans worldwide, is already looking at how AI voice can play a role in their content strategy, Veritone said.

“At OneFootball, our aim is to deliver the best football experience on the planet,” said Patrick Fischer, chief business officer at OneFootball.

“We believe content that drives engagement and adds to our vertically integrated product will give our fans a reason to return to our app many times per day. Realistic and scalable audio content can play an important role in this strategy.”

Veritone Voice offers a comprehensive suite of integrated voice features. Built on Veritone aiWARE, the first operating system for AI, Veritone Voice gives all users access to multiple voice engines that combine with other cognitive capabilities such as translation, sentiment analysis, content classification and many more to create content at scale.