MLB brings AI up to bat with Google Cloud
Analyzes 15 million data points per game in real time to compute previously inconceivable stats
Improves stats delivery by 300ms, enabling real-time analysis of ball/strike calls
Personalizes the fan experience with stat-driven content recommendations
Baseball has always been a game of stats and data, and now Major League Baseball (MLB) is putting AI to work to bring fans closer to the game. With Google Cloud, MLB is creating personalized, engaging experiences for fans and helping teams better understand the possibilities within their data.
Baseball has always been a game of stats and data, and now Major League Baseball (MLB) is putting AI to work to bring fans closer to the game. With Google Cloud, MLB is creating personalized, engaging experiences for fans and helping teams better understand the possibilities within their data.
Baseball, a timeless American tradition, remains a cornerstone of sports culture. Yet, as technology has evolved, so has the way fans engage with the game. While the rules and strategies of baseball have stayed largely constant since the late 1800s, the fan experience has undergone a dramatic transformation. From radio broadcasts to streaming platforms, fans today have unprecedented access to the sport. To keep pace with these changing expectations, Major League Baseball (MLB) has recognized the importance of personalization.
“Baseball has this great ability to bring people together through live events, media, streaming, and more,” says Josh Frost, Senior Vice President of Product - Baseball and Content Experience at MLB. “When we look at technology and how it interfaces with our products, we want to use it to make fans’ lives better. Technology is a bridge that connects people to their favorite teams and players as a daily part of their modern lives.”
When we look at technology and how it interfaces with our products, we want to use it to make fans’ lives better. Technology is a bridge that helps people connect to their favorite teams and players in their modern lives.
Josh Frost
Senior Vice President of Product - Baseball and Content Experience, MLB
But finding the right technology to power personalization is a different ball game. A single game yields more than 15 million data points that can help players and clubs understand performance and bring fans closer to the game. MLB needed industry-leading tools and support to ingest and store petabyte-scale data and analytics across 30 teams and over 4,000 games and events per season. To make sense of all its data and deliver the experiences fans are looking for—all while keeping fan data secure—MLB turned to Google Cloud.
Putting data to work at every level of the game
Preferring to build versus buy, MLB sought a platform that provided the building blocks for its cloud infrastructure rather than off-the-shelf solutions. “When we look for major technology partners, we think about one plus one equals three,” Frost explains. “It’s not enough to have a cloud partner that just works—it has to add incremental value to our business and empower us to be self-sufficient. Google Cloud does exactly that.”
First, MLB worked with Google Cloud to update Statcast, a data capture system that analyzes all MLB data across 30 ballparks in real time. Built for scale, speed, security, and flexibility using Vertex AI and BigQuery, Statcast transforms ball, player, and pose data into powerful predictive models to showcase the difficulty of a catch based on catch probability or predict a baserunner’s steal success rate. It can also analyze past statistics, such as a pitcher’s throwing data, to train custom models and neural networks, allowing MLB to decipher and categorize their pitch repertoire with pinpoint accuracy. MLB continues to evolve Statcast to capture new statistics, such as bat tracking.
“For almost 25 years, MLB has been investing in technologies that capture the game with extraordinary detail—every player, every object on the field, the spin of the ball, you name it,” says Sean Curtis, Senior Vice President of Technology (Infrastructure Operations) at MLB. “MLB has been a pioneer in transforming real-time data into a better experience for our fans”
While we’re collecting over 15 million events and data points per game, it is critical that we have a reliable and capable set of tools that empower our teams. To analyze that information, understand trends, and uncover what’s impactful within the game, we need a strong data backbone, and BigQuery has been a game changer for us.
Sean Curtis
Senior Vice President of Technology and Infrastructure, MLB
MLB then adopted an iterative approach to deploying Google Cloud for its various applications, taking advantage of the off-season to minimize disruption to the regular baseball season. This involved a series of proof-of-concept projects where existing applications were reimagined for the cloud environment, with a focus on reliability, scalability, and flexibility.
Since MLB processes a significant volume of fan data every day, the organization also needed to strike the balance between customer experience and security. “Our first priority is to protect the integrity of the game and that means protecting fans’ personal information,” Curtis says. “We set a high bar for security, and by investing in Google Cloud, we’re future-proofing our security model.”
MLB transitioned the majority of its applications to Google Cloud, using Anthos as a unified platform for development and deployment, and Google Kubernetes Engine to run containerized applications, enabling the team to scale resources up or down based on demand. The organization also deployed Google Distributed Cloud to process data at the edge, closer to baseball stadiums, reducing latency and enabling real-time, data-driven decisions.
Unlocking personalized fan experiences
While Statcast interprets real-time data to empower in-game and player prospecting decisions, MLB still needed a way to make better use of fan data to drive personalization. As a leader in sports innovation, the organization leaned into its partnership with Google Cloud to enhance the fan experience with customized content, interactivity, and improved content delivery.
It is exciting for us to evolve our digital platform as we think about how to reach more fans around the world with personalized experiences, and bring them the game they love in remarkable detail. We want to make the time our fans spend with us as enjoyable as possible, and to maximize the experience and minutes our fans spend with us each day.
Sean Curtis
Senior Vice President of Technology and Infrastructure, MLB
“What makes baseball interesting and scalable is that no two people have the same interests. This requires a strong technology tool set to bring personalization to life at scale,” Frost says. “From the analytics and database side to compute and APIs, everything has to put personalization front and center.”
MLB is now turning to new capabilities in Vertex AI to unlock personalization solutions to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time. The team will use Vertex AI to securely take in and analyze massive amounts of fan data to understand what they’re looking for, and Media CDN to power live game streaming, deliver personalized content and recommendations, and inspire engagement. The system will learn from the data to continuously improve and predict more relevant content at every touchpoint.
“We’ve made massive investments in low-latency, high-availability solutions, and our fan engagement and app ratings are at an all-time high,” Frost says.
“We’re generating new ways for people to interact with baseball that they hadn’t considered before, and Vertex AI will help us take this to the next level.”
Frost says Vertex AI will help bring baseball to a global audience, too. “Our worldwide reach continues to grow. Connecting fans in meaningful ways to players around the world is an important unlock for us,” he explains. “It’s exciting to use all the data at our fingertips to help those fans, friends, families, and the players themselves along that journey.”
MLB plans to use translation in Vertex AI to assist in this globalization and make baseball vocabulary and culture accessible to fans everywhere. For example, in addition to automated translation options, MLB has a dedicated in-house team of native Spanish speakers to ensure the quality of the translations at the local level.
Telling the stories beyond the stats
The partnership between MLB and Google Cloud began with a vision to do more with data. The relationship grew by going beyond batting averages and strikeouts to discover the stories behind the stats and elevate the fan experience. With Google Cloud powering Statcast, applications, and personalized content delivery, MLB has created a new way to enjoy America’s favorite pastime.
“We have very high standards for what we put in front of customers, from the quality of our streaming to the accuracy of the events we capture during games,” Curtis says. “Google Cloud understands that from a technical and consumer perspective, and together, we’re making baseball the best fan experience.”
Major League Baseball (MLB) is the most historic professional sports league in the United States and consists of 30 member clubs in the U.S. and Canada, representing the highest level of professional baseball.
Industry: Other
Location: United States
Products: BigQuery, Vertex AI, Anthos, Bigtable, Cloud SQL, Google Distributed Cloud, Google Kubernetes Engine, Media CDN
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