"With AI, you can create personalized sports content everyone can watch"
Itai Epstein, VP New Ventures at WSC Sports, said at the Microsoft AI Tour Tel Aviv 2026 that the company automatically creates World Cup content for Kan 11 and broadcasters around the world. On the collaboration with the NBA: "A program that used to take a year to produce, can now be produced in a few weeks or months."
“With AI, you can create much more personalized, local sports content, where everyone can see only what they want, when they want, where they want,” said Itai Epstein, VP of New Ventures at WSC Sports, in a conversation with Omer Kabir of Calcalist as part of the Microsoft AI Tour Tel Aviv 2026.
“We have a partnership with Kan 11 in which we create content for everyone who watches World Cup coverage,” said Epstein. “Everyone who watches sports content in Israel also receives Stories through us that are updated live during the game, as well as summaries of the matches. All the World Cup content you watch comes from WSC Sports.”
Is it produced automatically, without human input? Game summaries without editing or studio production?
“Yes. AI analyzes the game in real time, identifies what is interesting, and produces all kinds of content for digital, television, and every platform.”
Tell me about your collaboration with the NBA.
“In the last two years, we’ve built a new division called WSC Studios, which uses generative models for text, audio, image, and video, and we create sports content for kids,” Epstein said. “For example, with the NBA, we created brand-new characters, Alley and Oop, who teach kids about the NBA. We’re doing this with other clients around the world. It’s an illustrated digital series with two kid characters who are like NBA creators for kids, and they have a magic bus, their ‘Hoopmobile,’ that takes them from city to city in the United States. They teach kids about the players, the game, and the teams, and that’s part of what we’re doing to connect the next generation to sports.”
This is a series created using AI models. How much human involvement is there?
“Unlike the World Cup, where everything is fully automated, in children’s programming we have a studio with content writers, animators, and designers,” Epstein said. “But with all the new tools we’ve created for them, generative tools, they can do much more in much less time. A show that used to take a year to produce can now be produced in a few weeks or months, in weekly episodes. We’ve streamlined the process significantly.”
Are there voice actors, or is that already done by AI?
“We did voice-to-voice cloning of real actors. They are paid and benefit from the success of the show, but we use text-to-speech models based on cloned versions of the actors’ voices.”
Is it fewer people than a regular series crew, or is the same number of people now doing more things?
“A lot fewer people. It’s a small team working on a very complex production that used to require dozens of people. It also takes less time, less money, and delivers much more scale. It allows sports organizations that once wouldn’t even consider entering this field to produce high-quality content for kids.”
You’ve created a technology and a strong ecosystem that can be applied to other areas beyond sports, such as consumer brands, chains like McDonald’s, and even television content. Maybe even Netflix series. Is that something you’re thinking about?
“In our nature, we do sports first, but we are now opening a news division, and we are starting to apply the same automation we use in sports to news as well. We are looking at other areas of media.”
Tell us about other notable collaborations you have.
“We have more than 700 clients worldwide, including the NBA, NFL, NHL, ESPN, and more. We do for them what we are doing for the World Cup now: Kan 11, FIFA, and HBS, which is FIFA’s production company, and more than 30 broadcasters around the world broadcasting the World Cup. We analyze the content, the game, and everything around it, interviews, coaches, and audience reactions, and then produce large volumes of digital content for apps, social media, and the biggest organizations in the world.”
“We have partnered with Microsoft to bring AI capabilities to the world of sports. Together, we enable rights holders to transform live and archived sports content into intelligent, searchable, and personalized experiences, accelerating content discovery, deepening fan engagement, and creating new AI-powered workflows across digital platforms.”
Regarding the expected changes in sports content, Epstein said: “In our field too, there are agents that know how to build content campaigns, generate recommended content, analyze online trends, and prepare automated content based on those trends. They empower human teams and become real team members that do things people used to do. This enables much more personalized and local sports content, where everyone sees only what they want, when they want, and where they want. This requires scale that only AI can enable. We’ve been doing this for more than a decade, but now, with generative AI and agents, it can be done much more efficiently.”
