The future of sports broadcasting is here, and it looks a lot smarter. The NBA and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced a multi-year partnership that goes far beyond simply streaming games, launching a revolutionary new basketball intelligence platform designed to redefine how fans watch and understand the game.
With AWS officially becoming the Official Cloud and Cloud AI Partner of the NBA (including the WNBA, G League, and BAL), the league is moving into a new era of data-driven storytelling, giving fans an “Inside the Game” look previously reserved for coaches and analysts.
Introducing ‘NBA Inside the Game’ Powered by AI
The core of this partnership is the new platform, “NBA Inside the Game, powered by AWS,” which will crunch billions of player tracking data points in real-time. This machine learning engine will unlock a suite of new statistics that provide deep context and clarity to the action on the court.
Forget traditional box scores—these are the AI-powered stats you’ll be seeing soon:
- Shot Difficulty (Expected Field Goal %): No longer will all shots be equal. This stat will quantify the true difficulty of every attempt, factoring in the shooter’s setup, court positioning, and defensive pressure, giving fans a scientific appreciation for clutch shots.
- Gravity: This exciting new metric quantifies the unseen impact of superstar players. It measures the level of defensive attention a player attracts—with or without the ball—to calculate the amount of space they create for their teammates. It’s the ultimate measure of an offensive threat.
- Defensive Box Score: Finally, defense gets its due. AI algorithms will track and attribute every defensive play, identifying the primary defender responsible for each offensive action. Fans will now see quantifiable stats for ball pressure, double teams, and defensive switches.
A New Dimension to Live Streaming on Prime Video
This AI overhaul will be fully integrated across the NBA’s entire digital ecosystem, including the NBA App, NBA.com, and the league’s social channels, but the biggest impact will be on the live viewing experience, particularly on Prime Video.
As Amazon begins its landmark 11-year media rights agreement with the NBA, the AI features complement a suite of new interactive innovations:
- Key Moments & Rapid Recap: Utilizing AI models, Prime Video will instantly curate the “plays that matter” during the game and generate a concise, two-minute highlight reel to catch late-joining viewers up to the live action.
- Fully Customized Multiview: Fans will be able to create their ideal viewing setup, selecting their primary game while monitoring other matchups simultaneously, ensuring no critical moment across the league is missed.
- Real-Time Context: Broadcasters will be able to leverage the new AI insights to provide real-time historical context and strategic analysis, making the game more educational and insightful for every viewer.
Beyond the Box Score
The partnership also includes a tool called “Play Finder,” which uses generative AI to analyze and understand player movements across thousands of games. This technology will allow broadcasters and even fans to search and retrieve clips of similar plays instantly, laying the groundwork for unprecedented strategic exploration. NBA teams will also gain access to these same machine learning models to enhance their own coaching and front-office workflows.
The NBA and Amazon are not just upgrading their technology; they are fundamentally upgrading the fan’s understanding of basketball. By democratizing advanced analytics, they are bringing the complex, beautiful, and often invisible aspects of the game into sharp focus, ensuring the next-generation viewing experience is smarter, more interactive, and deeper than ever before.
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