Premier League app’s new AI features driving 25% more engagement

English soccer’s Premier League has seen a significant increase in engagement with its mobile app after introducing a suite of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered fan experiences ahead of the 2025/26 season.

Technology giants Adobe and Microsoft both became official partners of the Premier League over the summer, with the two companies using their relationships with the top-flight competition to showcase their AI capabilities by rolling out new features across the league’s digital platforms. 

For example, Microsoft Copilot is powering a Premier League Companion tool, which has been trained on more than 30 seasons of stats, 300,000 articles and 9,000 videos to generate responses to prompts and questions asked by app and web users.

Meanwhile, the Adobe Express creativity suite and Adobe Firefly generative AI platform have been integrated into the Premier League website and app, allowing fans to create images and videos focusing on their favourite clubs, players and Fantasy Premier League teams, including custom kits and badges.

Speaking on-stage at the SportsPro AI conference in London, Alexandra Willis, the Premier League’s director of digital media and audience development, revealed that the new tools are already having an impact on engagement.

“Since the start of the season, our engagement has been around 20, 25 per cent up year on year,” Willis said. “So more people are engaging with the Premier League app than have historically done so, and outside Fantasy Premier League as well. Although consumption of fantasy is also 30 per cent up.”

Willis also pointed out that the Premier League app was the number one app in the UK on the opening weekend of the 2025/26 season, ahead of the likes of ChatGPT.

While reiterating that the early signs are “definitely positive”, Willis added that there is “lots more to do” and “a long way to go” in the Premier League’s broader digital transformation journey. The competition’s digital efforts to date have largely revolved around its hugely popular Fantasy Premier League (FPL), which Willis said is on track for a record 12 million players this season.

However, the Premier League’s partnerships with Adobe and Microsoft are part of efforts to develop a more direct relationship with its millions of followers around the world and provide more personalised experiences for its fans.

Willis was speaking alongside Adobe’s vice president of international marketing Simon Morris, who said the company is now evaluating how fans use the tools it has already rolled out so it can produce more of the assets that are resonating most.

Meanwhile, Simon Crownshaw, Microsoft’s worldwide strategy director for media and entertainment, said that translations, localisation and open prompts are part of plans to drive further engagement with the Premier League Companion feature.

Crownshaw noted that the release of new features will be in line with the Premier League’s roadmap, but suggested that getting the first iteration of the products live for the start of the season was already a technological triumph.

“The speed that we did it should not be understated,” Crownshaw added. “Yes, no legacy tech to some degree, but the speed of innovation that we pulled off is pretty phenomenal.

“The way that we brought it all together is almost unparalleled, even from the work that I’ve done both with the NBA and the NFL, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. People will experience that as those features roll out very, very quickly during the season.”

SOURCE: https://www.sportspro.com/news/premier-league-app-ai-features-microsoft-adobe-september-2025/