Artificial Intelligence Revolutionary for Fantasy Sports?
Future of Fantasy Sports一 Part 2
This article is the second part of the series “Future of Fantasy Sports” where implications and present research taking place in the field of Artificial Intelligence with respect to fantasy sports would be discussed. So make a hot cup of coffee, and have fun reading!
Since inception of technology, it has only been trying to make everyone’s life easier. Some cynics still manage to find a negative side to it, and some continue to innovate and create. Today, it is believed that artificial intelligence can take a diabolical turn if not managed correctly but for once if we believe that the same artificial intelligence can (r)evolutionise the way mankind lives today, we can harness the power of artificial intelligence just the way it should be.
If you’re a fantasy sport (whichever sport) fan, you’d know what an arduous task assembling a fantasy line can be, yet you do it religiously because you love sports so much. To get an edge over your opponents, you try to watch as many games as possible, read as many blogs, go through great deal of statistics, listening to a variety of commentary, referring to online guides leaving no stone unturned! But what if all your opponents are also trying to do the same? So does anyone really have an edge over the other?
Artificial intelligence may be of help to you, my friend. It’s can be a panacea for all your fantasy sports related problems!
Artificial intelligence is intelligent because it collects a lot of data from the internet and tries to interpret it in a way which is coded into the machine by machine learning engineers. Many OTT players have come up with their own supercomputers which other people in the world can make use of through APIs.
The technology of artificial intelligence will look for as many player interviews, social media comments, analysis reports, statistics for your league’s players to give you a consolidated report of each and every player so that it all the research is done by the intelligent machine and all you’ve to do is select the players. And my friend, artificial intelligence can read a lot faster than you can. But if you’d still want to be Napolean about it, you can be. (Reference: Napolean once said: “If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.”)
Artificial intelligence can not only help you with all the research to be done in order to get a perfect line up but also predict football scores! Does it sound unbelievable? Well, it is happening already.
Computer scientists at University of Southampton are testing an artificially intelligent tool for predicting Premier League football results. The machine learning algorithm has managed to beat BBC football commentator Mark Lawrenson’s predictions for two seasons in a row. The team now wants fantasy football fans to try to beat it.
The name of this magic machine is Squadguru.
The Engineering behind Squadguru
The system is a two-layer one. The first layer uses Bayesian Machine Learning technique which is fed last five years of football related data. This data is used to train the machine and only based on probability (mathematical one), the machine can predict future scores. A drawback could be that- this machine can’t predict unexpected outcomes. For instance, if your league has not won a single game in last 5 years, then this machine may predict that it’ll not win the next game. The machine doesn’t believe in miracles, it only believes in math. The second layer to the system has combinatorial optimisation algorithm which is used to analyse best transfers with the budget.
The future of fantasy sports is so bright and exciting as long as technology keeps improving. Many unprecedented trends will be recorded. The artificial intelligence machine may even try competing with the world’s best fantasy sports players. Let’s see who wins!
We are hopeful that this article gave you a new perspective into the fantasy sports industry.
This is a series of articles which may help you get an idea of technology innovation and transformation. To read more about technology and its use case in fantasy sports industry, stay tuned!
