With billions of viewers expected to watch the 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament broadcast, eyes will be on how Lenovo handles the weight and flow of data from the matches.

Executives from Lenovo recently sat down with journalists in New York City to share their plans for the entire tournament and what they believe could be the largest day of data transmission in history — the final match.

The World Cup tournament will be held across 16 venues in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, posing logistical and technical challenges. Lenovo will provide compute, servers, storage, AI tech and other IT resources that must function in real time for the 48 teams competing in 104 matches scheduled from June 11 to July 19. 

Getting in the game

During the meeting, Arthur Hu, Lenovo's global CIO, said his responsibilities include overseeing the company's technology partnership with FIFA. While the event will put the Lenovo brand in front of a massive global audience, Hu and other executives argued that the technology collaboration itself could prove more significant as a demonstration of Lenovo’s AI chops and as an opportunity to boost the company's presence in the AI market.

Hu said the World Cup also offers an opportunity to show what AI can accomplish in practice, rather than simply how much of it is being used. 

He discussed the attention on token use and "tokenmaxxing " as organizations try to show how extensively they use AI, including in the sports world. At the end of the day, the results matter more than hitting arbitrary usage numbers.

"As much as I'm excited about token factories and tokenmaxxing and all these algorithms and how we can figure out who's on the leaderboards, that's actually not what fans of sports care about. That's not even what business leaders care about," he said. 

A throng of stakeholders will want immediate results. Lenovo expects a total of 6 billion viewers to tune in across the tournament, with upward of 5 million to 6 million fans attending stadiums. Hu said that, in addition to FIFA, Lenovo is helping the organization's 200 member associations with technology, from back-office systems to edge devices. 

This is far from the first time technology has taken to the digital field to support major sports. The Kraft Group, which owns Gillette Stadium, updated its venue's ecosystem in preparation to host its share of World Cup matches. Other sports, including the National Hockey League and Formula One racing teams, continue to update their technology resources to deliver content to fans and to offer teams data they can use to ramp up performance. 

What Lenovo brings to the field 

Lenovo's work with the World Cup will include supporting RefCams, which offer a first-person view from cameras that the tournament referees will wear. Hu said AI will help process footage to deliver a more real-time feed and keep fans engaged. Rather than a raw video feed, AI will help make sure the footage is processed but does not look like the camera ran on train tracks.

"That's not authentic. At the same time, if it makes you motion sick, and you're like, 'I don't feel so good,' that's also bad," Hu said. Lenovo's work includes figuring out the right amount of jitter to make the footage more engaging without taking fans out of the moment. Further, the data from that footage must make its way through the public cloud and back to fans' devices. "That's not always reliable. We're working at the edge, being able to provide the right processing, the right algorithms, so we can demonstrate a better experience for fans around a stabilized RefCam in real time that's usable for broadcast," Hu said.

Lenovo's work with FIFA began well in advance of the tournament. The company previously developed FIFA AI Pro, an AI-powered knowledge assistant that offers insights to coaches, analysts, and players. The AI platform was trained on data from matches from prior decades, offering analytics that teams can use to develop tactics and strategies for upcoming matches. This could be especially helpful to teams with limited in-house resources for competitive data analysis. For example, it could simulate matches and help develop a training regimen focused on upcoming opponents.

The digital side of FIFA's tournament could showcase how AI and other resources will increasingly be used to support real-world activities. Hu said he expects IT and operations technology to continue to intertwine behind the scenes in sports and other sectors, with Lenovo's work at the World Cup an example of evolutions to come. "Cybersecurity is big. There's a cybersecurity dashboard, but all aspects of what's happening — game time, pre-game, post-game, broadcast, in-person, online, back office — all of those things come together," Hu said.

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