Tennis fans following the 2026 US Open are getting a very different kind of second screen this year. IBM and the United States Tennis Association have unveiled a set of AI-driven features built directly into USOpen.org and the tournament’s mobile app, aimed at helping the more than 14 million fans who tune in annually track matches with far more depth than a simple scoreboard allows.
The timing lines up with a broader shift in how sports fans consume digital content. A new global survey from Morning Consult, commissioned by IBM and released alongside the announcement, found that 91 percent of tennis fans use sports apps during live events, and a notable majority say they trust AI-generated sports content. That trust gap has become a competitive line in the sand for leagues and federations racing to modernize their digital platforms, and the US Open is positioning itself at the front of that race.
For a tournament that has served as IBM’s digital testing ground since 1992, this year’s additions mark one of the more ambitious pushes yet, blending real-time biomechanical tracking, predictive analytics and conversational AI into a single fan-facing experience. Here is what is actually changing, and why it matters for anyone following the action from August 23 through September 13.
What’s New for Fans This Year #
A Redesigned Live Updates Homepage
The centerpiece of the update is a new Live Updates homepage designed to cut through the clutter of a 254-match singles draw. Rather than scrolling through every court simultaneously, fans can now prioritize favorite players and surface the matches, storylines and insights most relevant to them first. The goal, according to the organizations, is a more personalized entry point into the tournament rather than a one-size-fits-all news feed.
Serve Quality: Biomechanics Meets AI
Perhaps the most technically ambitious feature is Serve Quality, a new metric available across all singles matches. Built using limb-tracking technology developed with IBM Bob, the tool captures 21 data points across a player’s body and racquet, sampled 50 times per second. That granularity covers everything from wrist flex to how energy transfers from a player’s legs through the torso during the toss and strike.
Over the course of the tournament, this tracking is expected to generate roughly 1.2 billion data points, streamed and processed through IBM Confluent to produce a near real-time Serve Quality score. The metric factors in efficiency, accuracy, consistency and toss placement, giving broadcasters and fans a standardized way to compare serves that once relied purely on radar-gun speed.
Why Serve Mechanics Matter Beyond the Numbers
Serve analytics have become a growing focus in professional tennis coaching circles, where speed alone is increasingly seen as an incomplete measure of serve effectiveness. By quantifying mechanics rather than just velocity, the tool reflects a broader trend in sports science toward biomechanical efficiency as a predictor of long-term performance and injury risk.
Key Moments Builds on Likelihood to Win
The tournament’s established Likelihood to Win feature, which calculates a player’s real-time probability of victory using historical statistics, current form and match momentum, now gets a companion tool called Key Moments. Rather than just showing who is favored, Key Moments identifies and explains the specific turning points, momentum swings and pivotal exchanges that shape a match, giving fans context for why the odds shifted.
Match Chat Gets a Multimedia Upgrade
The tournament’s conversational assistant, Match Chat, has also been expanded. Fans can ask questions in plain language and receive answers that now include relevant photos and video clips rather than text alone. The tool runs on watsonx Orchestrate and draws on a mix of live match data, historical statistics and a set of AI agents trained specifically on the USTA’s editorial voice and tennis terminology, an effort to make automated answers sound native to the sport rather than generic.
Quick Reference: What Changed and Why It Matters #
| Feature | What It Does | Powered By |
|---|---|---|
| Live Updates homepage | Personalizes match tracking around favorite players | USOpen.org platform redesign |
| Serve Quality | Scores serve mechanics using 21 tracked body and racquet points | IBM Bob, IBM Confluent |
| Key Moments | Explains momentum swings behind Likelihood to Win probabilities | AI-powered match analytics |
| Match Chat | Answers fan questions with text, photo and video responses | watsonx Orchestrate |
What Officials Are Saying #
USTA Senior Director of Digital Strategy Brian Ryerson said the collaboration with IBM has reshaped what is possible in digital fan engagement this year, crediting the partnership with enabling more personalized storytelling throughout the tournament.
IBM’s Senior Vice President and Chief Global Affairs Officer Jonathan Adashek said the company can now route millions of live data points from the court into workflows that generate usable insights within minutes, calling it a shift in how value gets drawn from tournament data.
The Bigger Picture for AI in Sports
The US Open’s rollout arrives as major sports properties across the globe experiment with AI-driven fan tools, from predictive win probabilities to automated highlight generation. What sets this year’s US Open effort apart, based on the scale of data involved, is the attempt to quantify something as subjective as serve quality using biomechanical tracking rather than relying on subjective commentary or raw speed alone. Whether that approach becomes a standard fixture across professional tennis broadcasts may depend on how fans respond to it over the next three weeks.
Where to Find the New Features #
All three features are live now on USOpen.org and within the official US Open app, available for download on both the Apple App Store and Google Play. The 2026 US Open runs through September 13, giving IBM and the USTA a three-week window to gather fan feedback and usage data that could shape future iterations of the platform.