ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) and ESPN are once again teaming up to enhance and improve the fantasy football experience with AI technology from IBM’s watsonx. This season, the ESPN Fantasy Football app debuts the new weekly Fantasy Insights Built with IBM watsonx, giving the platform’s more than 14 million fantasy football players personalized, AI-powered recommendations derived from over 36 billion insights throughout the season.
Fantasy Insights Built With IBM watsonx appears on the home page of ESPN Fantasy Football, giving fantasy managers a quick, AI-generated overview of players that are of particular interest on any given week. It uses a set of series of data-driven categories, each with specific criteria, to identify those players. These build on the suite of AI-powered IBM Player Insights, which include Waiver Grades, Trade Grades, Boom and Bust probabilities, and the Trade Analyzer, all designed to transform massive volumes and varieties of data into actionable insights for fantasy managers.
“Fantasy football is all about optimizing decision making, and AI is helping fans make them with deeper insights,” said Jonathan Adashek, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications, IBM. “With Fantasy Insights Built With IBM watsonx, we’re putting the power of watsonx into the hands of millions of people on the ESPN Fantasy Football app, helping them make smarter, more informed decisions while also showcasing the same capabilities businesses around the world use to scale AI.”
A series of categories within IBM Player Insights build on “boom/bust” and other data points, then aggregate them into actionable insights helping fantasy managers make more informed roster decisions. Notable for 2025:
- Buy Low Sell High: Players whose recent opponent defenses were strong, but whose upcoming opponents are in the bottom 25th percentile.
- Diamond in the Rough: Players rostered by less than 85% of leagues who boomed by scoring in the 85th percentile for two consecutive weeks.
- Trade Bait: Players who have underperformed for two straight weeks and are rostered by a majority of leagues.
The feature uses AI models built with watsonx to identify players across several other categories, including:
- Predicted Top Boom: Players predicted to over-perform for the upcoming week.
- Predicted Top Bust: Players predicted to under-perform for the upcoming week.
- Hot in the Media: Players who are the most popular in media discussions.
- Media Darlings: Players whose positive media sentiment has increased by 10x and are rostered by less than 50% of leagues.
- Risky Business: Players with a high scoring projection, coming back from injury, and rostered by a majority of leagues.
- Sure Thing: Players with a stable floor when contrasted to their projection.
- Game Breaker: Players that have a high chance of outperforming their scoring projection.
Together, IBM and ESPN enhance the fantasy football experience while also helping ESPN drive engagement across their platforms. ESPN uses watsonx.data to centralize data from disparate sources, preparing it for analysis by AI models to deliver unique, fan-focused features.
To play ESPN Fantasy Football, sign up at ESPN.com/FFL or download the ESPN Fantasy App from the App Store and Android stores.
About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.
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SOURCE IBM
