GLOBAL: The World Cup is over for another four years, but its legacy has the potential to change how we watch, and how news organisations report, football forever.

This is according to a report by the Global Editors’ Network, which explored how news organisations including The London Times, Fox Sports in the US, and Le Figaro in France. Here’s a run-down:

Le Figaro: Automated visual summaries

The publication Le Figaro developed a tool that automatically generated visual summaries of every match within five minutes of the final whistle. Mondial stories were an evolution of an original format that debuted in 2017, according to Valentine Paquot, Mobile CTO and R&D lead at the publication, writing on LinkedIn.

The cards were pushed out to subscribers via the Le Figaro app and to its Sport24 app. By the time the competition reached the quarter finals, the stories were pushed to the entire sports fan-base, 90% of Figaro app users, Paquot told GEN. Though the tool was an audience success, the team is now working on commercialising the offer for the UEFA Champions League and the French domestic league coverage.

Fox News: IBM AI Highlights

Fox, the US network that won the rights to the World Cup, created a user-facing app capable of creating on-demand clips from as far back as 1958 using IBM’s video analysis tools. The service was available on both the Fox Sports app and website.

Using Watson Video enrichment, Fox effectively overlayed the footage with an automatic metadata generator, trained on cues such as cards, crowd noise, and audio commentary, allowing the system to index and search the full breadth of match footage.

The Times: Alexa skill

Paywalled London newspaper, The Times, released a Times Sport app for the Amazon Alexa platform that functioned as a sampler for its content. This allowed the paper to surface the day’s World Cup headlines and one interesting fact, before encouraging listeners on to the podcast.

While the strategy did find audiences, with the data showing repeat listens, the Alexa platform presents a risk for fast-moving news organisations with content quickly going out of date. This required a detailed content strategy which focused on original features and content with a longer shelf-life.

Sourced from Global Editors Network, Linkedin; additional content by WARC staff