Veritone Inc. announced that the College Football Playoff (CFP) leveraged an expanded deployment of Veritone solutions and services for the 2019 CFP National Championship to give members of the media even faster and richer access to its content resources. In addition to the CFP’s Digital Media Hub, a white-label digital asset management portal from Veritone, the CFP also utilized Veritone’s Live Event Services and aiWARE artificial intelligence platform for the first time. With aiWARE, the CFP was able to apply artificial intelligence to video footage and still images of press conferences, interviews and other Media Day events to produce transcriptions, automated facial recognition of players and coaches, logo identification, and other tasks enabling expedited and enhanced coverage of the 2019 College Football Playoff National Championship. For the first time, the CFP was able to make Media Day press conference clips and images available for search and immediate download within minutes of delivery. Following the success of this deployment, CFP has renewed its agreement with Veritone through the 2020 championship game in New Orleans.

The CFP maintains extensive resources for the media, ranging from brand guidelines, marks, and logos to Media Day and press conference clips for national championship games from 2015 through 2019 and beyond. Using the CFP’s Digital Media Hub, authorized members of the media were better able to search, preview, and download approved CFP content — both from the current year (in near real time) and archival — to help enhance their coverage of the College Football Playoff National Championship.

To ensure that critical media resources were available to the media on CFP Media Day and during other events, the CFP enlisted the Veritone Live Event Services team to provide on-site support. The Veritone team ingested hundreds of individual videos, sound bites, and photos from interviews and press conferences, performing timely capturing, tagging, and delivery of the content through the Digital Media Hub with aiWARE.

To make their live and archived content searchable by media users more effectively and efficiently, the CFP relied on the powerful AI capabilities of Veritone’s aiWARE. At live press conferences before and after the game, aiWARE provided automated transcription and facial identification to add additional depth to the content’s metadata and expedite search and discovery. Members of the media were able to see and listen to an interview, while also simultaneously viewing the transcript.

“Last year we took a big step forward by moving from our FTP site to Digital Media Hub, which gives key members of the press a reliable, well-organized, and user-friendly one-stop shop for all things CFP,” said Gina Lehe, senior director of external relations and branding for the College Football Playoff. “Now, with aiWARE and Live Event Services, we’re able to extend our broadcast-quality programming even further to enhance fan and brand engagement. Through the contributions of the Live Event Services team, users have even more immediate access to content for interview and press conference highlights, publishing, and syndication — while the events are happening. Plus, the aiWARE capabilities make it faster and easier than ever to locate and retrieve specific items from our vast library of content.”

“The CFP is a compelling example of how a major sports organization can tie together our AI-driven asset management platform and Live Event Services to offer its media partners fast, easy, and comprehensive access to high-value content, and also to streamline licensing monetization,” said Mike Arthur, senior vice president of Sports and Licensing at Veritone. “We are also incredibly honored that the CFP has placed its trust in Veritone to represent its licensing efforts alongside other premium sports brands. This is yet another example of the CFP’s commitment to raise the bar at a major and high-visibility sports event.”

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