7 May 2025 — Stats Perform, the global leader in sports AI, data, and technology, has won “Broadcast Technology of the Year” for OptaAI Studio at the prestigious 2025 Sports Technology Awards.
The recognition highlights how Opta Vision enabled BBC Sport’s analysts and pundits to translate complex football dynamics into engaging, real-time storytelling during Euro 2024, making their analysis more meaningful and accessible to viewers, and helping them showcase players’ skills and achievements more emphatically than ever. Together, this drove unprecedented fan engagement across digital and broadcast platforms.
During Euro 2024, the collaboration between Stats Perform and BBC Sport helped deliver 200+ unique data-driven storytelling pieces for the BBC’s coverage, which set new records with 91.8 million live streams on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport digital platforms.
The Sports Technology Awards judges praised OptaAI Studio for setting a new benchmark in AI-powered sports analysis, noting they “valued Opta’s smart use of data and AI to broadcast storytelling. The tech helped pundits bring more depth to their analysis and ultimately created a more engaging viewer experience.”
Steve Xeller, Chief Revenue Officer at Stats Perform.
“OptaAI Studio and Opta Vision provide hyper-contextual insights that amplify key moments and bring previously hidden on-field dynamics and under-the-radar player performances into the spotlight. In this way, we not only helped BBC Sport and its pundits deliver record-breaking Euro 2024 coverage, but also demonstrated the value to fans of intelligent, data-led storytelling about teams and players that drives interaction and conversation. This award validates our mission to help media and broadcasters innovate how sports stories are told, making their coverage even more memorable so that it expands their audiences and deepens fandom at every level, today and in the years ahead,” Xeller added.
OptaAI Studio leverages advanced AI and Opta’s trusted 7.2 petabytes of sports data to power more distinctive, impactful storytelling across thousands of games, teams, and players, including comparisons and contextual insights from every men’s European Championship game since 1980.
It will also soon incorporate next-generation AI-powered Opta Vision metrics such as Playing Styles and Off-Ball Runs to further transform how broadcasters, leagues, teams and media deepen fan understanding of the action, to bring them even closer to the game.
To learn more about how OptaAI Studio helps sports broadcasters, teams and media grow audiences and deepen fandom by enriching the action with unique insights and narratives during the heat of live games, visit here.
To learn more about Stats Perform’s latest Opta Vision metrics and dive more deeply into ways our Opta data powers football storytelling, for one of our three webinars on the 20 New Ways Media (and Fans) Are Talking About Football in 2025.
For the first time ever, the Opta Forum is heading to the U.S.! With the men’s 2026 FIFA World Cup on the horizon – we’re bringing together top executives from across global and U.S. sports media and content to explore how data and AI are reshaping how fans are reached, stories are told, and revenue is grown. Learn more about the exclusive, full-day event taking in New York City on June 3rd here.
