Automated sports journalism. The AnaFut case study, the bot developed by El Confidencial for writing football match reports

Abstract

Sports coverage has become an expanding field for automated journalism due to the peculiarities of the competitions. Sporting events have an important statistical base that fosters the use of structured datasets and helps media outlets schedule information routines because of the cyclic and repetitive nature of matches and tournaments, and consequently, of news coverage. This article is a case study of AnaFut, the first bot developed by the digital native El Confidential. This is the first Spanish media outlet to use this technology for the automated writing of football match reports. This study comprises the content analysis of eighty texts published on the web, semi-structured interviews of journalists from El Confidential, as well as a questionnaire carried out with a panel of five experts. Results show that the development and application of Artificial Intelligence in journalism, and particularly in the sports field, is still in the initial stages, and that news organizations from the most technologically advanced countries are leading the way in terms of innovation.