SailGP Partners With Acronis For Broadcast Enhancements
SailGP has partnered with cyber protection company Acronis – bringing a voice recognition system to the league in a bid to take fans closer to the action.
The pair have signed a new three-year deal to see Acronis become an official Cyber Protection Supplier to the global sports league, as well as Cyber Protection Partner to the France SailGP Team, helmed by multiple world champion Billy Besson.
Every conversation on board each of the national teams’ F50 catamarans taking part in the event will be tracked, transcribed and translated in real-time before being made available to broadcasters and viewers in a variety of languages including French, Spanish, Japanese and Mandarin.
The voice recognition project will also be made available to the teams’ data analysts as they look to gain a competitive edge, as each of the racing boats feature the same design and technology.
SailGP CEO Russell Coutts said: “Technical innovation plays an integral role in everything we do at SailGP, and we are continually looking at ways to entertain with our unique sports property and excite our fans. Being able to listen to all of the onboard communications in the different team languages will truly bring another dimension to our broadcast offer and we are really excited to work with Acronis to add this to our award-winning broadcast platform when the league restarts in San Francisco in April 2021.”
Acronis’ founder and Executive Officer Serguei Beloussov said: “This is an exciting project to work on together with SailGP, and we are looking forward to seeing it well-received by fans once the league restarts next year. We are also thankful for the opportunity to work with SailGP to help them get #CyberFit by developing innovative AI/ML voice recognition technology to enable fans to have a truly unique insight into what happens on the race boats.”
Acronis has a history of providing technological solutions to high-performance sports teams, developing cyber protection initiatives for Premier League, La Liga and Serie A football clubs, as well as teams in the NFL, MLB, Formula One, and Formula E.
