That can turn 7 million data points into an AI experience fans love
Harnessing technology to drive fan engagement with efficiency, flexibility and innovation
For three weeks at the end of summer, more than one million people make the journey to Flushing, New York, to watch the best tennis players in the world compete in the US Open Tennis Championships.
14M
World-class digital experiences for more than 14 million fans around the globe
7M
IBM captures and analyzes more than 7 million data points throughout the tournament
Year after year, it is one of the most highly attended sporting events in the world.
But more than 14 million global tennis fans follow the tournament through the US Open app and website. And to keep them coming back for more, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) has partnered with IBM for more than three decades, designing, developing and delivering a world-class digital experience that constantly advances its features and functionality.
“The digital experience of the US Open is of enormous importance to our global fans and, therefore, to us,” says Kirsten Corio, Chief Commercial Officer at the USTA. “That means we need to constantly innovate to meet the modern demands of existing and emerging tennis fans, anticipating their needs, but also surprising them with new and unexpected experiences to grow affinity.”
To help the USTA stay on the cutting edge of customer experience, IBM Consulting® works side by side with the USTA digital team to transform a massive volume and variety of US Open data into content and insight that informs and engages fans. They accomplish this feat with the help of a hybrid cloud infrastructure, the AI of the IBM watsonx® portfolio of products and the automation of key IT operations. These technological capabilities are the hallmarks of a smarter business, providing the USTA with the ability to deliver a world-class digital experience with efficiency, flexibility and innovation.
The US Open is more than just a tennis tournament. It’s a global event, attracting the attention of a wide range of audiences, from hardcore tennis fans to A-list celebrities to casual observers. It’s also a massive digital operation that must adapt in real time to spikes in demand, shifting fan expectations and a relentless need for innovation. IBM Consulting has helped the USTA meet these challenges by applying the four foundational elements of a smarter business.
- Hybrid Cloud: For scale, performance and flexibility
To support a global digital audience and ever-evolving feature set, the US Open relies on a hybrid multicloud infrastructure. With applications and workloads distributed across multiple clouds from multiple vendors—using the Red Hat® OpenShift® Platform for containerization—the USTA can write applications once and run them anywhere. This ability helps ensure both the agility to introduce new capabilities quickly and the scale to handle dramatic spikes in traffic— sometimes in excess of 5,000%—during high-interest matches.
The USTA can select the optimal environment for each workload using this hybrid approach, balancing performance, redundancy and cost. This level of flexibility is essential in a setting where uptime and responsiveness are paramount.
- Data: Maximizing value and fueling competitive differentiation
Each point played at the US Open generates more than 150 data points—serve speed, shot placement, rally length, winner type and more. Over the course of the tournament, it adds up to more than 7 million data points, combined with over 20 years of historical match data and millions of media articles.
To manage this vast and varied data landscape, the USTA uses the IBM® watsonx.data® data store, a hybrid, open data lakehouse built to support AI workloads. The system centralizes and curates data across structured and unstructured sources, enabling the development of AI models that can deliver real-time insights to fans.
By bringing AI to the data—rather than the other way around—the US Open team improves model accuracy and accelerates time to insight. It’s a strategic approach that turns raw data into differentiated digital experiences.
- AI: Driving productivity and generating insight at scale
The digital experience of the US Open is no longer just about scores and stats. Today’s fans expect context, prediction and narrative. To meet that demand, the USTA worked with IBM to embed AI directly into their editorial workflows.
Using IBM watsonx.ai® AI studio, the agentic AI of the IBM watsonx Orchestrate® platform, and the generative AI (gen AI) capabilities of IBM Granite® models, the USTA editorial team now produces AI-powered features at scale. Hundreds of articles are summarized, AI-generated commentary is automatically added to video highlights and millions of match insights are produced to add context to the action on the court. These AI tools help the USTA scale their content production dramatically. For example, in 2024 USTA editors used gen AI to increase the number of Match Reports they produced in the first round from 20 to 64, a more than 300% productivity boost.
- Automation: Increasing resiliency, reducing costs
With millions of fans relying on the US Open app and website throughout the tournament, the digital platform that powers the experience must run flawlessly. That’s why the team automates key elements of the IT operation.
With application observability tools, such as the IBM Instana® platform, the USTA can monitor the health of their digital infrastructure in real time, identifying and resolving issues before they affect users. HashiCorp Terraform automates the provisioning of infrastructure resources across cloud environments, leading to an 80% reduction is manual cycle time for build and provisioning tasks. And IBM Apptio® software helps manage the cost of more than 5,000 resources spread across 12 different cloud accounts.
These tools help ensure the digital operations behind the US Open are efficient, resilient and cost-effective. In fact, the USTA achieves 99.999% uptime during tournament play—a testament to the stability and scalability of their automated systems.
“Together with IBM, we developed a technical roadmap that set us on the path to smarter business years ago. IBM took the time to understand our strategic goals, and through close collaboration, we identified the hybrid cloud and AI capabilities needed to bring them to life. The results of that work—greater insights, increased uptime, and more—are now being realized by everyone from fans to our own team..”
Brian Ryerson, Senior Director Digital Strategy, United States Tennis Association
The transformation of the US Open into a smarter business is not just about technology. It’s about delivering a more dynamic, immersive experience that brings fans closer to the game—and creating a digital foundation that can evolve and scale for years to come. The AI-powered features tennis fans will enjoy in the 2025 US Open app include:
- Match Chat: An AI-powered chatbot that can answer tennis fans’ questions both during and after singles matches
- Key Points: Concise, AI-generated summaries of articles on the US Open app and website
- Live Likelihood to Win: Head-to-head match predictions generated from a comprehensive, AI-powered analysis of player statistics, expert opinion and player momentum, updated after every point in the match.
The platform regularly delivers more than 7 million AI-generated insights over the course of the tournament. More than 14 million unique users are expected to interact with the US Open digital properties in 2025. For some features, it’s not unusual to see more than 15 interactions per user.
From match predictions to AI-generated commentary, every feature of the US Open digital experience is grounded in strategic technology choices and collaborative innovation. It’s a model not just for sports, but for any enterprise looking to reinvent themselves for the digital age.
Founded in 1881, the USTA is the national governing body for the sport of tennis in the US. The US Open is the association’s Grand Slam tournament, first held in 1968—the year Arthur Ashe won the men’s singles title. The US Open is played each September at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, Queens, New York.
IBM solutions featured in this story
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