Liverpool FC and Wasabi Technologies told Insider Sport how cloud and AI are transforming fan engagement and the future of sports storytelling.
Last week, sports organisations swapped the terraces for the busy floor of SPORTEL Monaco, where new connections were made, partnerships renewed and the industry came together to discuss future trends.
A key theme across the event was artificial intelligence (AI), as companies showcased innovations capable of transforming the sports experience, including real-time translation of live commentary to automated content creation.
However, amid the excitement, Michael Welts, CMO at Wasabi Technologies, warned against getting swept up in the hype. Speaking to Insider Sport, he said AI is still at an early stage of its journey.
“This is still in its infancy,” Welts explained. “They’re literally still rolling out what we talked about two years ago and that’s our fault, because the technology is evolving so fast that every time we think we’re ready to push the button, something new has already been built.”
This sense of rapid evolution is familiar to Matthew Quinn, VP of Media at Liverpool FC, a figure in the sports space full of ideas about how technology can elevate storytelling.
Under his leadership, the Premier League club has become one of world football’s most engaged teams online, generating 1.7 billion social engagements and 13 billion video views last season alone.
A driver of this success has been its partnership with Wasabi Technologies, which began in 2022 as a cloud storage deal and has since become a collaboration around AI-powered content.
“We weren’t even in the AI space until then,” Welts added. “Liverpool were working with a company called Curio… we liked what they were doing so much that we acquired it. It’s now called Wasabi AIR… our platform for integrating cloud storage and content.”
Foundations built on clouds
Any conversation about AI at SPORTEL Monaco inevitably led back to the cloud. As Welts told Insider Sport, the connection is simple, working with massive volumes of content requires equally massive storage.
Cloud technology allows organisations to scale infrastructure and securely manage vast amounts of data without the expense and complexity of maintaining in-house systems. The pandemic accelerated the club’s shift, making remote working and decentralisation not just advantageous, but essential.
“The pandemic was a huge challenge for location and the team, so decentralisation became a big focus,” said Quinn.
“Initially it was just about reducing our physical footprint and moving people away from managing spinning disks and labour-intensive tasks. But once you’re in the cloud, it opens the door to ask what’s next?”
What was next for Liverpool? Well, the club began using AI to scan, tag, and categorise nearly a century’s worth of archive footage, covering men’s, women’s, U21s, U18s, behind-the-scenes content, documentaries and feature videos.
“AI helps us do the laborious jobs and free people to create,” said Quinn. “Our tagging was rudimentary before, but now we can integrate facial recognition, logo recognition, event-based recognition and speech-to-text. The creative team can turn content around faster and make an impact with fans.”
The impact has been record-braking. Last season, Liverpool generated 1.7 billion social engagements and 13 billion video views, 45% higher than their nearest rival.
The technology also powers global engagement. Using cloud infrastructure and AI, regional teams can create content tailored to local audiences. A geo-targeted post in Indonesia recently hit 20 million engagements, the club’s most engaged international post ever.
As football becomes more of a business than ever, Welts noted the next question is about how to monetise all that content.
“I think of it as opening up entirely new streaming opportunities, your own personalised sports channel based on the moments you like to see. It could be goals, teams, even Mohammed Salah… imagine literally your own channel.”
Quinn added: “Now we can react quickly, and all that social media presence feeds into marketing, merchandise, retail, digital products. Using data through registration funnels and partnerships, it creates a virtuous circle of more audience, more revenue, reinvested back into performance and trophies.”
Liverpool’s AI future
As Quinn always asks, “what’s next?”, and with Welts noting AI isn’t evolving slower for lack of ideas, Insider Sport asked Liverpool’s VP of Media to imagine the future.
“I’m really passionate about the content that fans make. Social media isn’t always very social; it can be quite one-way. Engaging a fan base the size of ours, and making them feel seen, is difficult,” said Quinn.
“Fans create a huge amount of content, and I’d be fascinated to know how you could utilise all that and turn it into a moment.”
Quinn painted a vivid picture of thousands of cameras around Anfield, some owned by fans, some by the club, capturing every angle and every moment from multiple perspectives.
He explained, AI could then aggregate and index all this content, from chants in the stands to celebrations on the pitch, transforming it into interactive, fan-driven highlights. Supporters could relive matches from their own point of view, or even contribute content to co-create experiences with the club.
However, despite offering a taste of the power AI can unlock, Quinn stresses the human element remains essential:
“Storytelling is still a unique human thing that AI will never replace. The enabling technology underneath it helps you get there faster, and allows us to create more of those unique, personalised stories.”
