IBM summarizes its study:

Only 27% of surveyed fans expect their sports consumption habits to stay the same over the next two years. Eighty percent (80%) believe technology – specifically AI — will have the greatest influence on how they follow sports by 2027. More than half (56%) of surveyed fans want AI-powered insights and commentary for past, current and future sporting events.

I am not sure how IBM phrased the questions in its study and I am not interested enough to read the study (linked above), but I have my doubt that most sports fans are clamoring for “AI-powered insights and commentary.” Taking the press release in isolation, it reads like someone wants to sell AI products and come up with ways to show that AI fits everywhere. With that being said, I could see the appeal of the “real-time translation technology” for some audiences. Left unsaid is the one area of sports fandom that may have actual clamoring for AI as opposed to whatever IBM is manufacturing here: Gambling.