Giving voice to the FIBA basketball world cup mascot through AI
FIBA is a global governing authority for basketball that represents 212 National Basketball Federations around the world and organizes and oversees international competitions, including the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 and Olympic Basketball Tournaments.
FIBA brings together a vast community of 450 million players and fans, fostering a solid global basketball community.
The challenges
FIBA aimed to give their mascot a voice and enable real-time fan interactions in 5 languages.
They needed a conversational AI agent capable of delivering fast and accurate FIBA World Cup information.
The goal was to improve fan experience by making tournament details easily accessible.
They wanted the agent to reach and engage as many users as possible through notifications.
Key updates included real-time news such as MVP announcements and favourite team progress after each match.
Our solution
Meet JIP — a basketball robot named by the initials of its co-hosting nations: Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. JIP's mission is to foster global unity, bringing people together under the banner of basketball.
1/ Multilingual Capability
Thanks to the GPT foundation, JIP has rapidly learned to communicate in multiple languages. As a result, it provides fans and visitors with the freedom to pick their preferred language for the conversation. You can choose from a range of options, including English, Japanese, Indonesian, French, and Spanish.
2/ Real-time Updates
JIP is seamlessly integrated with FIBA's API, ensuring he could provide accurate and timely data within seconds. This includes frequently changing updates to the schedule, scores, teams, players, and venue information.
3/ Advanced NLP
JIP is really good at understanding natural language questions and giving you meaningful answers. JIP knows a lot about the FIBA competition and can handle a wide range of questions about the World Cup 2023. For example, JIP knows quite a bit about the history of the Basketball World Cup - he can tell you how the tournament works, its history, and some interesting facts. He's knowledgeable about the teams, the best players, the groups, the leaders, and much more. Plus, JIP has a personality - he identifies himself as a basketball robot!
4/ Multitasking
Operating within a continuous stream of data, JIP efficiently manages multiple concurrent user requests while maintaining a high level of performance.
5/ Scalability
The agent was built to allow updates and fixes to JIP's functionality without any coding. Velocity handled all aspects of development and provided ongoing support throughout the project.
Additionally, analytics enabled FIBA to identify the most popular topics and concerns among fans based on the questions and issues they raised with JIP.
The results
Rapid fan engagement
Within two weeks, the JIP widget engaged
73,000+ basketball fans.
Strong user adoption
FIBA noted the agent delivered strong user
satisfaction and adoption.
Increased awareness
Many users were curious about JIP and the
importance of recycling.
High completion rate
71.51% of users completed interactions without
natural language understanding.
Driving conversions
The agent also supported promotions and lead generation—driving users to explore info, subscribe, and check match results.
