Football returns and along with it, Narrativa automatically generated content for sports

After a few months of uncertainty, normality is gradually returning to the world of sports. The coronavirus pandemic brought a halt to all sporting events – amongst other things – throughout the month of March, with no dates given for their restart. Since then, we have gone weeks with hardly any sporting news—exceptional circumstances indeed!

Despite the devastating economic and social consequences that we are seeing as a result of the coronavirus crisis, there was some good news in May when German football announced the official return of the Bundesliga on May 16. This was the first football federation in Europe to give the green light to a resumption of play. As a security measure, matches will be held behind closed doors to avoid crowds.

The return of football is slowly reactivating the sports scene, and for Narrativa it has meant the return to the automatic generation of sports content. Their Artificial Intelligence system (Gabriele), has years of experience in the automatic narration of football matches. Through algorithms, Narrativa converts sets of data into news using the natural language of sports reporting.

As of today, the main European competitions have all announced dates for their return. The exception to this is Ligue1 of France, which ended the season in April. La Liga in Spain will return on May 11 with the derby between Sevilla and Real Betis, whilst the Second Division restarts from Matchday 31. A week later, both the Premier League (June 17) and Serie A (June 20) will recommence play. These two superpowers join other European leagues such as the Austrian Bundesliga and the Portuguese Primeira Liga, which was the third European league to resume. In addition, competitions that bring together the best teams on the continent, such as the Champions League and the Europa League, have not yet announced official restart dates although they have confirmed that the competition will resume.

Across the Atlantic, the situation is progressing a little more slowly, although many leagues look close to restarting with many teams already in training and others about to start doing so. In Latin America, the Costa Rica Clausura Tournament returned in May, making it the first professional football tournament in the region to do so since the start of the COVID-19 crisis. Others soon started announcing dates for a comeback, including the Paraguayan League, which will return on July 17. Looking beyond football, the NBA has also announced it will return on July 31.

Many other competitions have decided to cancel the season and start a new one during the summer, such as Liga MX, which will start in July. Others do not yet have a confirmed return date.

Gabriele has been adding the return dates of each competition to her calendar, ready to start generating news for clients from all over the world in Spanish, English and Arabic. These articles feature a match preview, statistical data and a match summary including highlights.

And so, we see the reactivation of one of Narrativa’s most well-known and effective natural language solutions. This news generation service makes content available to customers quickly and directly, freeing up journalists from repetitive tasks and allowing them to focus on generating more in-depth content. In addition, the content design has an improved SEO strategy which gives clients access to some of the highest positions in search engine results, allowing them to increase their web traffic. As well as this, it interacts rapidly in social networks.

In summary, after a few unusual months for everyone, normality is gradually returning to both Narrativa and the rest of the world. The startup had to adapt to the circumstances of the COVID-19 crisis and during the pandemic was happy to be able to contribute with its coronavirus monitoring project. This project provided a data API to track the pandemic from various parts of the world and made this freely available to the media and institutions. Now the startup is revitalized with fresh perspectives for the future in finding the best solutions for the needs of each business.