Sky Sports partners with GameOn to bring chatbots to Premier League

GameOn, mobile engagement platform for fans, has announced a partnership with Sky Sports to bring a Soccer Saturday Chatbot to its English Premier League coverage. Nicknamed the "Jeff Bot" after Jeff Stelling, the enigmatic host of the famed Gillette Soccer Saturday show, it will feature his real-time game commentary and respond to natural language requests from fans about news, standings, game updates, Jeff's musings, and more. The English Premier League will also join the lineup of sports fan huddles available on the GameOn app, delivering news, score feeds, and video highlights, along with a group and private option to chat with fellow fans.

Available through fans' preferred social media messaging platforms including Facebook Messenger, Slack, Skype, and Telegram, the Jeff Bot will respond to fans' natural language requests for specific news, scores, stats, and more about the teams they love and the games they follow. The bot captures the personality of host Jeff Stelling, which creates fun engagement that fans, league, and advertisers love. This partnership extends the reach of Soccer Saturday, letting fans consume content at home, on the go, or through social channels, evolving the game day experience to match the interests of the audience.

The user experience will be broken into three parts:

- Customization.

- Push content.

- Pull content.

Consumers will be welcomed with helpful tips on how to navigate the bot, and an option to follow their favorite teams. This allows users to customize the content they receive automatically. Based on their favorite teams, users will be sent a trending news item each morning and evening and real-time updates during live games. Users will also be able to request team schedules, results, latest news, league standings, live-game status, follow/unfollow teams, limit notifications, and more.

Sky Sports is the latest to join the platform, following the success of the Sports Illustrated x GameOn Olympics and NFL bots launched earlier this year, and continued work with TIME Inc to extend the reach of its magazine portfolio and associated content through interactive chatbots.

The Sky Sports Chatbot is now available for Facebook Messenger, Skype, Slack, and Telegram. The GameOn sports app is also available now for free as an Android and iOS mobile application.