After 60 editions of these monthly meanderings; 60 wanders through the wide world of sports technology, this month is a first.
This month is a part 2 (of sorts). An unintended continuation of last month’s ramblings around AI and the FIFA World Cup.
Shortly after last month’s edition – and after the TEC Lowdown on the technology partnerships and platforms powering the FIFA World Cup – FIFA announced SalesForce as Official Tournament Supporter for the 2026 World Cup and the 2027 Women’s World Cup. Salesforce stated that the partnership will involve “the complete portfolio of Salesforce AI solutions” and that their technology “will play a central role in how the tournament operates, engages fans, and coordinates with host cities.”
This sounds great but It’s hard to envisage how central this role could be given the lead time of just six days before the tournament kick off. With the focus on Salesforce-owned Slack for 2026, this may well just be the scaling up of a tool already in play, and it will take until the Women’s tournament in 2027, with 12 months of preparation for Salesforce to truly show what it can do.
The other last minute World Cup related AI partnership that caught my eye – and the one that inspired this unexpected sequel – was the announcement that OpenAI were doing a global collaboration with Lionel Messi. A deal between ChatGPT and one of football’s biggest stars – the platform’s first real foray into football and it’s with one of the best players on the planet. This sounds huge right? Let’s dig a bit deeper…
Firstly, it felt like a BIG step in terms of AI’s commercial relationship with football. The World Cup has seen the likes of Lenovo, Globant and latterly Salesforce invest in partnerships that leverage football’s popularity to promote their brand and showcase their capabilities. However, each of these – and indeed the likes of Microsoft and Adobe too who have established similar partnerships with the Premier League – were tech businesses long before AI; businesses who have adopted machine learning to enhance their efficiency.
OpenAI is, on the other hand, an AI native business – one that has so far only made tentative steps into sports partnerships with the New York Mets and the San Antonio Spurs. Signing a deal with Messi at the start of the World’s biggest football/sports tournament is a big play at a time when their nascent dominance of the generative AI space is beginning to be eroded by the likes of Claude and other challenger platforms. An acknowledgment that sport / athletes can play a big role in driving brand affinity within an increasingly competitive AI market.
