Wimbledon 2025: AI takes over line calls, ends 147-year human judge era for first time

The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) announced on October 9 that its new AI platform for calling the shots will be adopted at The Wimbledon Championships from 2025.

AELTC said the officiating technology—Live Electronic Line Calling (Live ELC)—will be in place for all Championships and Qualifying match courts and cover the ‘out’ and ‘fault’ calls that human line umpires have previously made.

These changes will see the introduction of ELC technology at the Wimbledon Qualifying Competition venue for the first time.

Line calls

The decision to adopt Live ELC was made after extensive testing during this year’s Championships was successfully completed.

This technology builds on the existing ball-tracking and line-calling technology for many years.

“The decision to introduce Live Electronic Line Calling at The Championships was made following a significant period of consideration and consultation,” Sally Bolton, Chief Executive of the All England Club, commented.

“Having reviewed the results of the testing undertaken at The Championships this year, we consider the technology to be sufficiently robust and the time is right to take this important step in seeking maximum accuracy in our officiating. For the players, it will offer them the same conditions they have played under at a number of other events on tour.”

“We take our responsibility to balance tradition and innovation at Wimbledon very seriously. Line umpires have played a central role in our officiating set-up at The Championships for many decades and we recognise their valuable contribution and thank them for their commitment and service,” Sally added.

AI tech

The system that will be implemented at Wimbledon for the 2025 tournament tracks the ball’s movement through 12 cameras strategically placed on every court.

There are also microphones on the court to listen to the sound of the ball, and a computer interprets the ball’s location in real-time.

Similar to the Video Assistant Referee in soccer, a video operator oversees the technology from an external room and communicates with the Chair umpire on the court.

The ELC system is also called Hawk-Eye Live. Next year, this AI technology will replace all 300 line judges.

However, this is not the first time that Wimbledon has adopted AI.

In 2023, the tournament revolutionized its coverage by introducing artificial intelligence-powered commentary and analysis.

AI commentary

The All England Club partnered with tech giant IBM to offer fans a unique immersive experience with AI-generated audio commentary and captions in online highlights videos.

IBM, pioneers of AI-curated video highlights that earned the IBM Consulting team an Emmy Award, trained its bleeding-edge Watson AI platform in tennis nomenclature.

This venture builds upon the All England Club’s existing utilization of IBM’s AI technology, which includes features like the player power index, which analyzes player performance.

One of the highlights of this AI-powered coverage is the analysis of singles draws.

IBM’s AI Draw Analysis examines draws upon release and provides insights into a player’s potential path to the final, uncovering anomalies and potential surprises that may not be apparent when glancing at the players’ rankings.