Eurovision Sport deploys AI to translate live athletics into eight languages

This deployment demonstrates the commercial viability of using AI to solve the high-cost barrier of secondary-market sports localization. By bypassing traditional remote commentary booths, rights holders can now reach global audiences in their native languages with minimal additional infrastructure. In a fragmented market where niche sports struggle for international distribution, real-time dubbing allows federations to maximize the value of existing primary feeds across untapped regions. Watch for Camb.AI’s expansion into more Tier 1 sporting events, as the technology moves from youth championship trials to flagship global competitions like the upcoming games in Birmingham.

The collaboration between Eurovision Sport and Camb.AI is part of a multi-year digital transformation strategy by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). In March 2026, the two organizations announced they would deliver live and on-demand AI-powered subtitling for the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games. That initiative covered all six Paralympic winter sports, emphasizing real-time, contextual speech-to-text transcription to meet digital accessibility standards. Per BroadcastNow, March 2026, the EBU has used these smaller championships as an innovation sandbox before scaling technology to larger flagship events.

Camb.AI has also aggressively expanded its footprint outside of European athletics. In April 2024, the company was selected for the MLS Innovation Lab and successfully translated a Major League Soccer Next Pro match into French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Furthermore, per SportsPro, September 2025, Indian digital sports platform FanCode integrated Camb.AI technology to translate live cricket matches into multiple regional Indian languages. This growth aligns with the EBU’s broader distribution push; in June 2026, the organization expanded its Eurovision Sport streaming service onto FAST platforms in the UK, including Samsung TV Plus and Amazon Live, according to TVBEurope, June 2026.

The use of AI commentary follows several years of iterative testing by the EBU. During the 2023 European Athletics Team Championships in Poland, the union experimented with AI-driven voice cloning to create audio versions of live blogs using the voice of former athlete Hannah England. According to SVG Europe, June 2024, these early trials were critical in establishing the transparency and labeling standards now seen in the Rieti event, where all AI-produced content must be clearly identified to maintain editorial trust.