Business challenge Wimbledon is synonymous with sporting excellence, which explains its appeal for both fans and partners. To maintain The Championships’ prestige, its digital experience must be second to none.

Transformation Mick Desmond An adaptive, responsive digital Commercial and Media Director platform helped The Championships AELTC grip fans’ attention by putting real-time data in context, uncovering compelling narratives, and highlighting the moments that matter.

Business benefits: “Capturing the moments Wimbledon 2015 that matter helped create 71 million a more vivid experience visits to the digital platform, Creating a unique digital for fans than ever before.” a 13 percent year-on-year Mick Desmond increase experience to capture the Commercial and Media Director AELTC 21.1 million moments that matter unique devices connected to the platform, a 23 percent increase Known to millions of fans simply as “Wimbledon”, The Championships is the oldest of tennis’ four Grand Slams, and one of the world’s highest-profile sporting 125% events. Organized by the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) it has been a increase in the number of global sporting and cultural institution since 1877. unique mobile visitors Share this The champion of The second is The Championships’ On the mobile side, the team recognized online presence, which is delivered via the Delivering a unique that the wider availability of high- Championships wimbledon.com website, mobile apps, digital experience bandwidth 4G connections meant that and social media channels. The constant the mobile website would become The organizers of The Championships, evolution of these digital platforms is the IBM and the AELTC embarked on a more popular than ever – and ensured Wimbledon, the All England Lawn Tennis result of a 26-year partnership between complete redesign of the digital platform, that it would offer easy access to Club (AELTC), have a simple objective: the AELTC and IBM. using their intimate knowledge of The all rich media content. At the same every year, they want to host the best Championships’ audience to develop time, The Championships’ mobile tennis Championships in the world – in Mick Desmond, Commercial and Media an experience tailor-made to attract and apps were enhanced with real-time every way, and by every metric. Director at the AELTC, explains: “When retain tennis fans from across the globe. notifications of match scores and events you watch Wimbledon on TV, you are – and could even greet visitors as they The motivation behind this commitment is seeing it through the broadcaster’s “We recognized that while mobile is passed through stations on the way not simply pride; it also has a commercial lens. We do everything we can to help increasingly important, 80 percent of our to the grounds. basis. Wimbledon’s brand is built on its our media partners put on the best visitors are using desktop computers premier status: this is what attracts both possible show, but at the end of the day, to access our website,” says Alexandra The team also built a special set of fans and partners. The world’s best media their broadcast is their presentation of Willis, Head of Digital and Content at the websites for the most important tennis organizations and greatest corporations The Championships. AELTC. “Our challenge for 2015 was how fans of all: the players themselves. Using – IBM included – want to be associated to update our digital properties to adapt IBM® Bluemix® technology, it built a with Wimbledon precisely because of its “Digital is different: it’s our platform, to a mobile-first world, while still offering secure web application that provided reputation for excellence. where we can speak directly to our the best possible desktop experience. players with a personalized view of their fans – so it’s vital that we give them the We wanted our new site to take maximum court bookings, transport, and on-court For this reason, maintaining the prestige of best possible experience. No sporting advantage of that large screen-size and times, as well as helping them review The Championships is one of the AELTC’s event or media channel has the right to give desktop users the richest possible their performance with access to stats on top priorities; but there are only two ways demand a viewer’s attention, so if we experience in terms of high-definition every match they played. that the organization can directly control want to strengthen our brand, we need visuals and video content – while also how The Championships are perceived people to see our digital experience reacting and adapting seamlessly to by the rest of the world. as the number-one place to follow smaller tablet or mobile formats. The Championships online.” The first, and most important, is to “Second, we placed a major emphasis provide an outstanding experience for To that end, the AELTC set a target of on putting content in context – integrating the players, journalists and spectators attracting 70 million visits, 20 million articles with relevant photos, videos, who are lucky enough to visit and watch unique devices, and 8 million social stats and snippets of information, and the tennis court-side. The AELTC has followers during the two weeks of The simplifying the navigation so that users vast experience in this area. Since 1877 it Championships 2015. It was up to IBM could move seamlessly to the content has delivered two weeks of memorable, and AELTC to find a way to deliver. that interests them most.” exciting competition in an idyllic setting: tennis in an English country garden.

2 Turning data into The same natural language processing front-end was also connected to a insight – and insight comprehensive structured database of into narrative match statistics, dating back to the first Championships in 1877 – providing a To supply its digital platforms with the one-stop shop for both basic questions most compelling possible content, and more complex inquiries. the team took advantage of a unique advantage: its access to real-time, “The Watson trial showed a huge amount shot-by-shot data on every match of potential. Next year, as part of our played during The Championships. annual innovation planning process, we Over the course of the Wimbledon will look at how we can use it more widely fortnight, 48 court-side experts capture – ultimately in pursuit of giving fans more approximately 3.4 million data-points, access to this incredibly rich source of tracking the type of shot, the strategies tennis knowledge,” says Mick Desmond. and the outcome of each and every point.

This data is collected and analyzed in Taking to the cloud real time to produce statistics for TV commentators and journalists – and The whole digital environment was also for the digital platform’s own hosted by IBM in its Hybrid Cloud. IBM editorial team. used sophisticated modeling techniques “The ability to capture the moments Harnessing the to predict peaks in demand based on the “This year IBM gave us an advantage that matter and uncover the compelling schedule, the popularity of each player, that we had never had before – using narratives within the data, faster than power of natural the time of day, and many other factors – data streaming technology to provide anyone else, was key. If you wanted language enabling it to dynamically allocate cloud our editorial team with real-time insight to experience the emotions of The resources appropriately to each piece of into significant milestones and breaking Championships live, the next best thing Another new capability trialed this year digital content, and ensure a seamless news,” says Alexandra Willis. to being there in person was to follow the was the use of IBM’s natural language experience for millions of visitors around action on wimbledon.com.” processing technologies to help mine the the world. “The system automatically watched AELTC’s huge library of tennis history for the streams of data coming in from all interesting contextual information. The In addition to the powerful private 19 courts, and whenever something team trained IBM Watson™ Engagement cloud platform that has supported The significant happened – such as Sam Advisor to digest this rich unstructured Championships for several years, IBM Groth hitting the second-fastest serve in data set and use it to answer queries from also used a separate SoftLayer® cloud Championships history – it let us know the press desk. to host the Wimbledon Social Command instantly. Within seconds, we were able Centre, and also provide additional to bring that news to our digital audience, incremental capacity to supplement the and share it on social media to drive even main cloud environment during times of more traffic to our site. peak demand.

3 The elasticity of the cloud environment As security threats – and in particular “Overall, we had 13 percent more visits is key, as The Championships’ digital distributed denial of service (DDoS) from 23 percent more devices than Solution components platforms need to be able to scale attacks – become ever more prevalent, in 2014, and the growth in the use of • IBM Bluemix® efficiently by a factor of more than 100 IBM continually increases its focus wimbledon.com on mobile was even • IBM InfoSphere® Streams within a matter of days as the interest on providing industry-leading levels more impressive,” says Alexandra Willis. builds ahead of the first match on of security for the AELTC’s whole “We saw 125 percent growth in unique • IBM Integration Bus Centre Court. digital platform. devices on mobile, 98 percent growth in • IBM Power Systems™ total visits, and 79 percent growth in total • IBM QRadar® SIEM A full suite of IBM security products, page views.” Keeping Wimbledon including IBM QRadar® SIEM and IBM • IBM MessageSight Preventia Intrusion Prevention, enabled Mick Desmond concludes: “The results • IBM SPSS® Modeler safe and secure this year’s Championships to run show that in 2015, we won the battle • IBM System Storage® smoothly and securely, and the digital for fans’ hearts and minds. People may Online security is a key concern platform to deliver a high-quality user have favorite newspapers and sports • IBM Watson™ Engagement Advisor nowadays for all organizations. For major experience at all times. websites that they visit for 50 weeks of • IBM Web Content Manager sporting events in particular, brand the year – but for two weeks, they came reputation is everything – and while to us instead. • SoftLayer® the world is watching, it is particularly Capturing hearts • IBM Global Business Services® important to avoid becoming a high- “That’s a testament to the sheer quality • IBM Global Technology Services® profile victim of cyber-crime. For these and minds of the experience we can provide – reasons, security has a vital role to play in harnessing our unique advantages to • IBM Interactive Experience IBM’s partnership with the AELTC. The success of the new digital platform bring them closer to the action than for 2015 – supported by IBM cloud, any other media channel. The ability Take the next step Over the first five months of 2015, IBM analytics, mobile, social and security to capture and communicate relevant security systems detected a 94 percent technologies – was immediate and content in real time helped our fans To experience the Championships’ digital platform for yourself, or to learn more about the increase in security events on the complete. Targets for total visits and experience The Championships more AELTC, please visit wimbledon.com wimbledon.com infrastructure, compared unique visitors were not only met, but vividly than ever before.” For more information about IBM’s 26-year to the same period in 2014. exceeded. Achieving 71 million visits partnership as Official Technology Supplier to and 542 million page views from 21.1 the AELTC, please visit ibm.com/wimbledon million unique devices demonstrates the Connect with us platform’s success in attracting a larger audience than ever before and keeping those viewers engaged throughout The Championships.

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2015, IBM Corporation, 1 New Orchard Road, Armonk, NY 10504 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America, November 2015.

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Bluemix, Global Business Services, Global Technology Services, InfoSphere, QRadar, SPSS, SoftLayer, System Storage, and Watson are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/us/en/copytrade.shtml.

This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.

Please Recycle YTC04041-USEN-01