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The 2022 – 2023 fantasy football season is officially underway, and IBM and ESPN are teaming up once again to give ESPN fantasy football players the competitive edge with the artificial intelligence (AI) of IBM Watson.

New this year, Trade Analyzer with Watson uses AI to analyze vast quantities of structured and unstructured data to help ESPN Fantasy league players of all skill levels understand the value of a potential trade – for them and their opponents. Trade Analyzer with  Watson analyzes information such as player stats and scores (structured) as well as news articles and media coverage (unstructured), which is then turned into meaningful insights to help with roster decisions.

Player Insights with Watson will also return this year to help ESPN Fantasy Football players make sense of matchups, analyze players' boom or bust chances, and assess the impact of injuries on their rosters.

Both Trade Analyzer and Player Insights combine traditional data analytics with IBM Watson Discovery's natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, to analyze statistical inputs on football players and teams, and experts' sentiment from various sources, including ESPN.com, news articles, blogs, and podcast transcripts.

For six consecutive years, IBM and ESPN have partnered on the co-creation of AI models that turn the treasure trove of fantasy football data into insights to  make the digital experience more informative and engaging. Developed and deployed by IBM Consulting, these are the very same technologies used by IBM clients across industries use to build enhanced customer experiences, help their employees reach new levels of productivity, and make more informed, data-driven business decisions.

For more information on IBM Watson, visit https://www.ibm.com/cloud/watson-discovery. To play ESPN Fantasy Football and experience Trade Analyzer with Watson, sign up at ESPN.com/FFL or download the ESPN Fantasy App from the App Store and Android stores.