The arrival of NBA Inside the Game powered by AWS is the next step in the evolution of sports in the AI era – a move that is part of a wider trend of partnerships between sports leagues and technology providers. Amazon Web Services and the NBA have announced that the new platform will transform massive amounts of game data into interactive experiences for fans, while also providing teams with machine learning-based analytics tools.
The platform is expected to analyse data tracking players’ movements and on-field events – including 29 points on an athlete’s physique – to generate statistics that have hitherto remained beyond the reach of traditional counting. Example metrics include:
- Shot Difficulty – an assessment of the difficulty of a shot, taking into account the position of the defenders and the positioning of the player,
- Defensive Box Score – identifying which defender was responsible for which striker,
- Gravity – measuring the space a player generates for the benefit of the team, even when he does not have the ball.
Additionally, Play Finder, an AI tool that will search from a catalogue of thousands of actions to find similar patterns and provide historical context to current events, is planned for the platform. The new features will make their way to live broadcasts, NBA apps, league websites and social channels.
The NBA gains a technology and analytics superstructure in this collaboration – AWS will become the league’s official cloud and AI partner, including the WNBA, G League and other related structures. For Amazon, it’s a way to grow its AI portfolio in the entertainment and sports sectors – a market that invests heavily in data and engaging experiences.
Key questions concern scalability and transparency: models that calculate statistics that are ‘invisible’ to the eye need to be well justified. Without proper scrutiny, tools may emerge that amplify data from the margins but lose meaning in real match interpretation.
This AWS-NBA move is no exception – the sports sector is increasingly covenanting with AI as the next layer of media product. In July 2025. The Premier League entered into a five-year deal with Microsoft, which sees the league deploy Copilot’s AI for fans, as well as migrating its digital back office to Azure.
While such partnerships are often announced without disclosing financial value, their technical and media significance is growing. For AWS, it’s an opportunity to not just be an infrastructure provider, but a creator of AI-powered sports experiences. For the NBA, a new channel for monetising and differentiating content in an era when viewer attention is becoming increasingly valuable.
