Alugha Win First Ever European Tour Innovation Hub With Tata Communications

The European Tour yesterday revealed alugha as the winner of their first ever Innovation Hub programme, in association with Tata Communications.

But what is alugha’s product, how did the Innovation Hub work and why were they the standout candidate? iSportconnect delved further with Tata Communications and the European Tour.

Alugha’s idea aims to help overcome the complexities of managing multilingual video content for the European Tour’s diverse golf audiences. It would create an interlocked toolkit for the complete multilingualization process – from transcription over multi-audio-track voiceovers to video hosting and distribution. It is all about breaking through language barriers to enable more effective engagement with a global golfing fan base.

“Alugha’s idea, which would provide rapid translation of our digital content into many different languages, would help localise our engagement to continue to bring people together in the future.” – Michael Cole.

The Innovation Hub with Tata Communications was created as a way for the European Tour to give start-ups the opportunity to showcase the products they believed could provide technology-driven ways to enhance its product for golf fans all across the world.

More than 70 start-ups from around the world applied to be part of the Innovation Hub, and those were narrowed down to a final three, with alugha joined by EyeCandyLab and Sparx:

• EyeCandyLab – A mobile augmented reality (AR) technology allows fans to enjoy live games with an interactive AR layer. By pointing their smartphone or tablet towards live action shown on TV, fans would be able to access stats, player profiles and 3D green layouts in an interactive and visually enhancing way. They could also engage with life-size holograms to bring the action from the course into their living room
• Sparx – A consumer engagement platform for enhancing broadcast streams. It would allow for real-time audience engagement through on-screen polling, trivia, predictive gaming, sports wagering and data collection. The Sparx platform would integrate directly with the live broadcast graphics system to connect viewers to the action happening on screen, creating a two-way communication channel between the broadcaster and viewers

The final contenders attended a three-day workshop, including an evaluation and learning process with representatives from the venture capital community in London to analyse their products.

Finally, alugha, EyeCandyLab and Sparx showcased their products and how they could be of benefit to the European Tour in a Dragon’s Den style setting, where they were quizzed in great detail by a panel of experts comprising the European Tour’s Chief Content Officer Rufus Hack, Chief Technology Officer Michael Cole, and Dhaval Ponda, Global Head of Media and Entertainment at Tata Communications.

Watch how alugha’s product works (use the globe icon in the corner to change language): https://alugha.com/embed/web-player?brand=a7bfc070-8942-11ea-89ca-838eccbafb29&v=2777b0f4-853e-11ea-a3c3-c9e5bc6968ba

Speaking on the winning innovation, Cole said: “European Tour content has been particularly important for golf fans in the current global climate and alugha’s idea, which would provide rapid translation of our digital content into many different languages, would help localise our engagement to continue to bring people together in the future.”

Alugha’s product has the potential to provide the European Tour with an ability to curate its content into many different languages across the world and allow greater accessibility for fans. Further details of alugha’s proof of concept will follow in due course.

Talking about alugha, Dhaval said “Team alugha is very passionate about their work and the problem they are solving. It is a very interesting multi-language product which not only relies on self-learning but also leverages individual experiences to add that level of emotion to a piece of content. This can help with the personalization of content across the global golf fanbase helping the sport engage with its fans in the current climate and beyond”