AI cricket commentator wins grand prix for Mindshare Sydney in Warc Media Awards

Mindshare Sydney's 'Monty', an AI cricket commentator built for Foxtel, has won the top prize and a special award for best scalable idea in the just-announced Warc Media Awards for Effective Use of Tech.

This is the third of four winner announcements for the global case-study competition, which has a US$40,000 prize purse. The winners in the use of data and channel integration sections were announced previously, and the winners in the remaining category, effective use of partnerships and sponsorships, will be announced shortly.

The effective use of technology category yielded eight winners, and APAC work dominated, winning the sole grand prix, one of two golds, both silvers, and two out of three bronzes. See the full list below, which also notes three special award winners. 

Monty helped Foxtel convince people to pay to watch cricket, which had formerly been free, by predicting when wickets would fall in live tests. The custom machine-learning model helped deliver an 18% increase in average weekly sales, according to the agency.

Here's the full winner list:

Grand Prix

• Monty - The world's first AI predictive commentator · Fox Cricket · Foxtel · Mindshare Sydney · Australia + Scalable Idea Award

Gold

• Blend-In · Pantene · Procter & Gamble · MediaCom Connections Israel, ACW Grey Tel-Aviv · Israel + Platform Pioneer Award
• The Irreplaceable Home Taste · Knorr · PHD Hong Kong · Hong Kong + Early Adopter Award

Silver

• AI Baby Expert · Jinlingguan · Yili · Mindshare · China
• The Secret Menu · Google Translate · Google · PHD China · China

Bronze

• Capacity-Based McDelivery 2.0 · McDonald's · Hanbaobao Pte Ltd · OMD Singapore · Singapore
• QQ Dancing · Maybelline · L'Oréal · Mindshare China · China
• United Against Abuse · Danner · MediaCom · Denmark

See the Warc website for more information.