The Associated Press, working with automation by HERO Sports and data from Sportradar, will deliver previews for all Major League Baseball games previously not offered by the news organization.
Rollout of the automated game previews will begin Sept. 12, 2018. AP Sports editors have crafted the previews while working closely with the automation team at HERO Sports using MLB game, seasonal and historical data from Sportradar.
While AP staffs all 2,430 MLB games each season and has done so for generations, the news organization has not been able to provide previews of each game until now. The automation technology enables the production of templated text stories directly from the data without human intervention
“We are excited about adding this next level of coverage,” said Barry Bedlan, AP’s director of sports products. “Our editors have been impressed with the quality of the content being generated through this technology and the robust sports knowledge of the HERO Sports team.”
HERO Sports uses automation to generate previews and other content for all levels of nearly every competitive sport, ranging from Division III college lacrosse to the NFL.
“We’re thrilled to collaborate with The Associated Press to offer baseball fans insightful previews about the teams and players they love,” said HERO Sports co-founder Jordan Nilsen. “By combining our content creation platform with historical stats, and search data, we provide fans exactly the information they are looking for before a game. “
Sportradar is AP’s primary sports data provider and holds official data partnerships with top U.S. leagues, including the NFL, NBA and NHL.
“We are thrilled to be working with the AP to offer their readers our wide breadth of data to help create automated MLB previews,” said Jason Sukhraj, senior vice president of business development, Sportradar. “As a company, we are always looking for new and unique ways to showcase our data and products to fans and we believe this is a great system to achieve just that.”
AP also uses automation technology from Automated Insights to produce recaps of all MLB-affiliated minor league baseball games as well as nearly 4,500 stories covering U.S. corporate earnings each quarter.
AP’s sports report first began using automation technology approximately six years ago and now provides most of its sports agate to subscribers through automation, primarily from Sportradar. AP rolled out automated corporate earnings reports in 2014.
AP continues to explore ways to use automation to expand its content offerings and improve its news coverage.
About HERO Sports
HERO Sports is a technology platform creating over a billion pieces of unique sports content every month from youth leagues to professional sports. HERO Sports leverages data, machine learning, and sports expertise to create a wide range of content including previews, recaps, rankings, predictions, matchup analysis, fantasy, and betting insights. For more visit http://herosports.com and follow HERO Sports on Twitter @herosportsnews.
About Sportradar
Sportradar is the leading global provider of sports data intelligence. The company serves leagues, news media, consumer platforms and sports betting operators with insights and strategic solutions to grow their businesses. Sportradar is the trusted partner of more than 1,000 companies in over 80 countries and serves as the official partner of the NBA, NFL, NHL and NASCAR as well as FIFA and UEFA. It is also the only provider entrusted to work with the U.S. sports leagues in an official capacity to distribute sports data (NBA and NHL) and AV rights (MLB) for betting purposes. The company monitors and delivers insights from more than 400,000 matches annually across 60 sports categories, having developed the industry’s most proficient software while setting standards for speed and accuracy. For more information, visit www.sportradar.com.
Contact
For media inquiries:
Bryan Baldwin
Director of Internal Communications
The Associated Press
212-621-1724
bbaldwin@ap.org
For sponsorship or revenue opportunities:
Barry Bedlan
Sports Products Director
The Associated Press
972-677-2270
bbedlan@ap.org
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