Signify + Stats Perform
Signify have announced a unique partnership with Stats Perform, a sports tech leader in data and AI technology to help expand the reach of Threat Matrix, Signify’s purpose built proactive AI-monitoring service that detects online abuse at scale.
Social media abuse is now recognised as one of the most serious problems facing sport, with calls from fans, players, teams, leagues, and even governments to take action. Signify have conducted projects across multiple sports including Athletics, Basketball, Cricket and Football. Running international Open Source investigations for FIFA, sharing data and tactics with Premier League clubs to protect players from online hate.
The Professional Footballer’s Association (PFA) partnered with Signify to carry out the most comprehensive study of its kind into online abuse. The report, analysing 6 million tweets over the 2020-21 season has led to the removal of thousands of posts and accounts from social media platforms, whilst initiating club sanctions and criminal investigations.
Signify will work with Stats Perform to expand access to Threat Matrix, by focusing on providing sports industry stakeholders, such as rights holders, teams, player associations, international federations and governing bodies, with the service to unmask abusers and identify trends, tactics and technology used to send hate online. Those involved in sport need support and protection to help evidence, deflect and report abuse. Threat Matrix offers this service, stripping anonymity from protagonists and ensuring that abusers do not go unpunished.
Threat Matrix provides proactive monitoring and analysis of millions of open source social media posts across multiple platforms. Service capabilities include images and emoji recognition, as well as keywords, phrases and a long list of abusive words, terms and profanities in multiple languages. The service has been developed over the last 2 years and is built on an evidence based and defensible expert approach to the screening and assessment of inappropriate, threatening and unwanted communications directed at public figures.
Jonathan Hirshler, Signify CEO, commented: “We are delighted to be partnering with Stats Perform to offer Threat Matrix to their unrivalled portfolio of clients. The combination of Stats Perform’s sports industry expertise and Threat Matrix’s bespoke AI powered proactive monitoring and analysis capabilities provides sports stakeholders with an industry leading solution to help protect their athletes and staff from online threat and discriminatory abuse.”
Threat Matrix joins Stat Perform’s existing portfolio of integrity services offerings used by some of the world’s leading rights holders such as The Championships, Wimbledon, as well as La Liga and MLS.
Carl Mergele, Stats Perform CEO, said: “Our Integrity work at Stats Perform focuses on the protection of sport and that includes athletes and other participants. Sports are under increasing pressure from fans and sponsors to demonstrate moral and social responsibility and our partnership with Signify Group will see the deployment of game-changing AI to protect players, athletes and officials from online racist, homophobic, sexist and other abuse. We are very proud to bring this offering to our clients and it blends perfectly with our approach to sport integrity and our wider ESG commitments.”