The supplier states that social media abuse is a pressing issue in the world of sports. Fans, players, teams, leagues, and governments are demanding action to address this problem.
To tackle the impact of online abuse on sports and its participants, Stats Perform’s Integrity Unit is partnering with Signify. This collaboration will utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to identify abuse in real-time. They will expand Signify’s Threat Matrix service, which detects online abuse on a large scale.
The aim is to provide sports industry stakeholders, including rights holders, teams, player associations, international federations, and governing bodies, with a service that uncovers abusers and recognizes the trends, tactics, and technologies employed to propagate online hate.
Threat Matrix actively monitors and analyzes millions of social media posts across multiple platforms. It also removes the anonymity of online abusers. The service, developed over the past two years, incorporates features such as image and emoji recognition, as well as analysis of keywords, phrases, and abusive language.
Signify has carried out projects across various sports and conducted open-source investigations for FIFA. They are currently working with Premier League football clubs to safeguard players from online hate. The Professional Footballers’ Association has also partnered with Signify for a comprehensive study of online abuse, analyzing 6 million tweets from the 2020-2021 season and leading to the removal of numerous posts and accounts from social media platforms.
Stats Perform’s CEO, Carl Mergele, emphasizes the focus on protecting athletes and other participants within the integrity work carried out by the company. He highlights that sports need to demonstrate moral and social responsibility due to increasing pressure from fans and sponsors. The partnership with Signify will deploy game-changing AI to shield players, athletes, and officials from racist, homophobic, sexist, and other forms of online abuse.
Signify’s CEO, Jonathan Hirshler, expresses delight at partnering with Stats Perform to offer the Threat Matrix service to their extensive client portfolio. Combining Stats Perform’s sports industry expertise with Threat Matrix’s AI-powered proactive monitoring and analysis capabilities establishes an industry-leading solution to safeguard athletes and staff from online threats and discriminatory abuse.
