Premier League and Microsoft join forces to create fan-friendly digital platforms
In February 2025, Everton’s Abdoulaye Doucoure received a long clearance from his goalkeeper shortly after the opening whistle and fired a cracker of a shot into the lower corner of the net. He chipped the Leicester City keeper to give the Toffees a 1-0 lead just 10.18 seconds into the match – the fastest goal of the 2024/25 Premier League season.
But was it the fastest Premier League goal of all time? Where does Doucoure’s heroics rank on the list of speedy scores? That’s the kind of information a football fan would want to know the answer to … well, fast.
Enter the Premier League Companion powered by Microsoft Copilot. This new tool is available on the official Premier League mobile app and web platforms, which have been modernized to deliver rich, new experiences for fans using Azure OpenAI Service. Using Microsoft Azure AI Foundry Services, including Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models, the Companion tool accesses information from a treasure trove of new and archival content, including 30 seasons of stats, 300,000 articles and 9,000 videos, unlocking a whole new world of immersive content for fans about the clubs and players that matter to them most.
It’s the centerpiece of a new five-year strategic partnership between the companies, making Microsoft the official cloud and AI partner of the Premier League, leveraging Microsoft’s cloud and AI technologies to usher in a new era of intelligent and intuitive fan experiences.
“Our role is to create value for our clubs by engaging with as many fans as we can and bringing them into the Premier League ecosystem,” says Will Brass, chief commercial officer for the Premier League. “Ultimately, a big part of that is making sure our channels are best equipped to engage with those fans and, more importantly, deliver to fans what they want.”
Will Brass is the chief commerical officer of the Premier League. (Photo by Premier League).
From Bournemouth to Wolverhampton and every location between, the passion of Premier League fans is unmatched across England. The same could be said for supporters from Azerbaijan to the United States. The love of the game is a major reason why 1.8 billion people in 189 countries have made the Premier League the world’s most-watched football league.
Delivering what football fans want
Featuring some of the sport’s most iconic teams and spectacular performances from some of the world’s greatest players, Premier League football is one of the biggest names in sports. It also continues to grow, with one-third of the league’s followers coming aboard over the last few years, according to Brass. The ability to serve both the die-hards and newcomers was a key part of the league’s digital transformation goals.
“Our clubs have incredibly strong relationships with their fan bases,” says Alexandra Willis, director of digital media and audience development for the Premier League.
“What the clubs are excited about with this partnership is the ability of the Premier League to bring new fans in, encourage them to discover and learn more about the league and then ultimately form a relationship with a club and develop that lifelong affinity with a club.”
Alexandra Willis is the director of digital media and audience development for the Premier League. (Photo by Premier League).
The Premier League’s transformation is centered around creating an intelligence engine for the league, deepening fan engagement while at the same time developing agile organizational operations. Microsoft is helping the Premier League create one of global sports’ most advanced and secure media, data and AI platforms.
As the app continues to be enhanced, fans will eventually be able to ask the Premier League Companion questions like “What are the best five goals of all time?” or “How many times has my Club been relegated?” and receive instant answers from a library of 35,000-plus prompts.
Using agentic architecture, the Companion will be able to continually gain information from articles, football match results and other data sources to create contextual conversations that also include relevant videos or personalized recommendations to help create a deeper connection between league and fan, no matter which club they support.
“We would hope that for, say, a Crystal Palace fan, that the app will help the fan to discover what’s happening right now, here’s where to go and watch, how to listen, how to engage, and with a constant referral back to Crystal Palace’s platforms,” Willis says.
“But someone newer to the Premier League, who may not have identified a favorite club, we want to introduce them to the league at large with player-led storytelling and give them the opportunity to follow players they’re interested in, be recommended players and topics based on their nationality and then ultimately help them over time develop that affinity for whatever club or clubs they want to engage with.”
Willis also suggested that Premier League fans can connect further with the league through the improved Fantasy Premier League experience, with the Premier League Companion playing a supporting role for managers later in the season.
The magic of live sport
The league will use Microsoft 365, Power Platform and Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations to bolster internal workflows, enhancing collaboration and driving data-driven decisions across departments.
“For one example, moving the historic Premier League archive onto Azure, that’s all part of our ability to both curate content for our own channels but also to better serve our broadcast licensees around the world,” Brass says. “It ensures that content, which is rich and exciting and historic, is as readily available as can be, both to ourselves and our partners. It’s of enormous strategic value. And so it’s reflective, I think, of the importance of this relationship with Microsoft that they are such a critical part of the infrastructure that is not only for the Premier League but for our ecosystem of partners and licensees.”
And while the new Premier League platforms have just launched, there are already future goals in sight, including open-ended natural language queries, increased translation/subtitling across several languages and audio summaries of match weekends.
“It’s very important to us and the broader partnership that we don’t just do one thing and that’s it,” Willis said. “We want the products to evolve as the technology evolves and also as we understand more of the benefits that Copilot and the other tools can bring to us.”
Everton supporters can take solace in the fact that Doucoure’s goal last year was the fourth-fastest in Premier League history, with Southampton’s Shane Long setting the bar at 7.69 seconds in 2019. That’s just one example of the plethora of information that’s just a simple prompt away for football fans and will transform the way matchday is consumed when the season kicks off in August.
“The magical thing about sport is that it’s live and you have to be in the moment to experience it in the best possible way,” Willis said. “And we have become attuned to wanting to complement the live experience with additional information – the concept of the second screen came about for that reason. So, making sure we’re able to provide that information so that it is contextual and it is relevant is really important.
“The Premier League is a football competition proudly staged in England but globally loved and admired. So, we want to make sure that we’re providing something for everyone.”
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