Ryan Beal is the CEO and co-founder of SentientSports, an AI-driven firm that uses technology to enhance the experiences of fans, athletes, and teams.
The firm’s AI tools include ‘ScoutGPT’, a sports-driven generative AI model, and ‘CyberAI’, a newly introduced tool aimed at tackling online abuse of athletes.
ScoutGPT can answer questions about sports players, teams, and games with data-driven predictions. When asked about upcoming match outcomes, ScoutGPT analyses extensive data and uses simulation models to provide informed insights.
With the addition of Nick Jennings, a computer scientist and vice-chancellor of Loughborough University, the firm is now focusing on using ‘CyberAI’ to tackle online abuse against athletes on social media.
Ryan Beal discusses with TI how online abuse affects athletes and how AI can address this issue. The conversation also covers how digital technologies are changing the live sporting landscape and how automation can improve Video Assistant Referee (VAR) decisions, a technology that has been contentious in its use in penalty outcomes in football.
How does computer scientist Nick Jennings’ involvement reflect how your team tackles online abuse with AI?
We’ve split our board into two parts. One of the things we pride ourselves on is the multigenerational AI talent on our leadership team. We have Professor Gopal Ramchurn—my previous supervisor at university—who is currently head of Responsible AI UK, one of the flagship government programmes in AI at the moment. And we have Nick Jennings, who was [Ramchurn’s] supervisor when he did his PhD. So, we’ve got three generations of AI talent and Ph.Ds on our board.
We’ve got that really strong AI talent. Then we’ve got a strong commercial arm as well: We’ve got CCOs from other businesses, ex-professional rugby players, ex-bankers, and Ed Woodward, who is an ex-executive vice chairman at Man United.
Between those two halves of the board, we’re able to identify problems for the sports base and then help find the best AI to solve them.
So, how can AI be used to tackle online abuse against players?
You see players who’ve made their debut at 19 berated on social media and then really struggle to deal with it. We want to be proactive about that. We want to have an AI that can go out onto social media, identify abuse, report it, automate that process, and then also identify players who may be at risk.
So, if the players who’ve made their debut have been abused online, we can identify them to the teams to help them manage this.
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Interacting with fans without facing abuse would be a great thing. But every player is different, and every player may want to interact with their fanbase on a slightly different level. AI will allow them to personalise that experience.
Some might want to see none of the negative side, and some might want to see everything that’s coming at them. It’s about being able to have that AI on your shoulder that acts on your behalf to be able to filter the content and make social media a nicer place to be.
It’s not a new problem; abuse against sports players has been around pre-social media, but it’s trying to draw the line and giving them the option to switch it off.
Does online abuse affect the whole fan community?
When you go onto these communities now, such as X (Twitter), you can see it has become quite a dangerous place to be. It’s not as nice as it was three to four years ago when you could go on there and actually have useful conversations and debates around sports.
Fans want somewhere to come together and share experiences. This also applies to the other products we’re building, where we can start converting sports content into different languages and making it ultra-personalised to individual fans.
Potentially, one of the biggest Man United fans could be in Indonesia, and we want to give that fan a way to connect to their club in their local language, which they might not have had access to before.
Do you think AI can help improve digital experiences for fans?
I think the broadcast model that we’ve had is almost a bit old now. The new generation of fans that come through aren’t going to be broadcast satellite TV subscribers. There’s going to be this shift towards digital, and a shift towards fans experiencing sports in a different way.
As we move from a physical broadcast world into a much more digital streaming world – what can we do to make it less of a one-way interaction?
It can be more personalised and offer broadcasts or articles, making it something where the fans can interact in a slightly different way.
Many fans believe VAR is affecting the atmosphere and energy of live sports – how can new technologies change this?
I think semi-automated offside technology is going to make a big difference next season. One key thing is how quickly we can make these decisions. When you bring humans in who are looking to the minuscule millimetres to try and make these decisions, it takes three, four, or five minutes.
It loses the spark of the last-minute Wembley celebration. You want to be able to celebrate that without thinking it might be ripped away, so being able to do that in five seconds would make a huge difference.
There’s a whole host of things that need to go into semi-automation, from the centre technology to the camera technology. I’m not quite sure the frame rates are there at the moment to make these decisions to the granularity they want to, but it will be really interesting to see how it speeds things up and makes it a better experience for the fans in the stadium.
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