National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise the Detroit Pistons have announced a new partnership with artificial intelligence (AI) fan engagement company GameOn.
The Pistons will integrate GameOn’s AI chat features into its app and website to bolster fan engagement, helping fans with queries such as tickets, merchandise, and game highlights.
GameOn is also working with the Pistons to build a fan experience at Detroit’s home area, Little Caesars Arena, to further enhance the experience for those attending.
“Nearly 70% of the questions we receive relate to ticketing, stadium and gameday logistics – all of which historically have been addressed by reaching out directly to our sales and service teams,” said Adam Falkson, Vice President of Business Intelligence at the Detroit Pistons.
“GameOn allowed us to free up time for our personnel to tackle other business needs while remaining confident that our fans will continue to receive superior, real-time support.”
Detroit becomes the seventh NBA franchise to partner with GameOn in the past year, with the Milwaukee Bucks, Atlanta Hawks, Houston Rockets, and the Philadelphia 76ers among some of the team utilising the company’s AI webchat technology.
But it is not just NBA teams that are embedding AI technology to better serve fans. Premier League club Arsenal FC, Major League Baseball’s (MLB) Milwaukee Brewers, and the National Football League’s (NFL) Las Vegas Raiders have all partnered with GameOn and integrated its technology.
“The best chat-based systems have between a seven and eight percent error rate, meaning the fan asked a question that the chat-based service doesn’t know an answer to,” said Alex Beckman, GameOn Founder and CEO.
“I think there’s a really exciting opportunity for generative AI to be a partner to this whole experience and help answer those questions in a way that reduces that error rate. If somebody were to ask, ‘when will Steph Curry retire?’
“That’s where I think a really good generative AI system could come up with an answer that satisfies the end user and doesn’t just give a standard error message.”