A referee reviews a game on a surface of Microsoft during the second half of the game between the Ravens of Baltimore and the Cleveland Browns at M&T Bank Stadium on January 4, 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Scott Taetsch | Getty images
Microsoft And the NFL announced Wednesday that they extended their partnership to provide real -time game data and game analysis to coaches and players using Microsoft Copilot and Azure Artificial Intelligence.
The multi -year partnership will upgrade the NFL key line visualization system by equipping 32 teams with more than 2,500 Microsoft surface co -pilot tablets to improve data collection during days of playing. Microsoft and the NFL said that the agreement would also support operations by helping managers to follow factors such as weather delays or technical equipment problems.
The NFL and Microsoft do not disclose the duration of the extension or the total cost of the agreement.
“Improvement of the League is a responsibility that we take seriously, and Microsoft has been a technological partner of touch of confidence for more than a decade. With Microsoft AI technologies, including Copilot, we see enormous opportunities to raise the Gameday experience for our clubs and deliver an even more convincing product to our fans,” said the information director of NFL information, Gary Brantley in a press release.
The extension is based on a long -standing partnership between Microsoft and NFL. Since the 2014 season, all NFL teams have had access to the Microsoft Surface tablets provided by the League, specially configured, according to the NFL. Previously, Microsoft had more than 2,300 devices for visualization system of the surface key line installed in the NFL.
The NFL deputy, IOC Aaron Andolia, told CNBC in an interview that existing tablets had already been exchanged for pre-season and that new devices are used on the ground now.
He said that during the live games, players only have a few seconds on the bench between the games to analyze the training and watch different angles and images. AI helps players and coaches automatically filter this huge amount of data, Adendolia said.
“These are not decisions to take AI. It is not an AI that sheds light on decisions. What it really is is that AI allows people to get information more quickly with less manual intervention,” said amendolia.
For coaches, Amendolia said that game data such as the number of snaps or the number of people in the field can be introduced into an Excel leaf in real time with Copilot, which releases them from these tasks and calculations themselves.
More recently, during the combination of the NFL 2025, the coaches and scouts used Microsoft Azure AI to assess more than 300 potential players for selection in the draft of the NFL.
Microsoft said on Wednesday that clubs will soon be able to use AI for projects outside the combination of the NFL, as well as for the productivity of all commercial functions, including finance, human resources and events.
The staff of the football club will also soon be able to use AI agents for players screening and the management of salary ceilings, said Microsoft.
The League has already implemented a type of artificial intelligence in its ONEPASS FAN Guide application for events, said AMENDOLIA, which can help with questions and answers from fans. He said the NFL tries to train this so-called agentic AI to be more focused on customer service.
The technology giant also works separately to infuse Azure AI video tools during team training sessions to help training, evaluations of players’ injury.
Amendolia said this video component will imply the automatic analysis of metadata so that users can quickly find some players, camera angles or readings in video sequences.