The worldwide enterprise panorama is getting into the period of the Frontier Agency—a brand new actuality the place organizations aren’t simply adapting to vary however driving it. For media and leisure leaders, embracing agentic AI with human creativity is the important thing to unlocking new worth, accelerating innovation, and shaping the way forward for the {industry}. We’re already seeing 90% of our strategic media and leisure prospects are leveraging Microsoft and companion cloud and AI options to speed up their journey towards changing into Frontier Corporations.
A Frontier Agency is a next-generation media group that reimagines what’s doable—throughout storytelling, viewers engagement, operations, and monetization. These firms embrace agentic AI to unlock creativity in each nook of the enterprise, from editorial and manufacturing to advertising and marketing, distribution, and technique. By deploying AI brokers that act, study, and adapt, Frontier Corporations empower groups to concentrate on high-value work, speed up innovation, and ship clever, personalised experiences at scale.
Within the period of the Frontier Agency, AI isn’t just automating duties in media and leisure—it’s unleashing creativity throughout the workforce.
Enrich worker experiences: AI helps staff by caring for repetitive duties, giving them extra time to concentrate on artistic and strategic work, and connecting their instruments and knowledge into easy, clever workflows.
Reinvent viewers engagement: AI transforms how media firms join with audiences by enabling hyper-personalized content material, adapting tales to viewer preferences, and delivering experiences that drive deeper engagement throughout platforms and codecs.
Reshape enterprise processes: AI streamlines media operations—from metadata tagging and localization to marketing campaign administration and distribution—by automating routine duties and enabling agile, outcome-driven groups that concentrate on strategic oversight and artistic excellence.
Bend the curve on innovation: Generative AI accelerates content material creation in media by serving to writers, editors, and designers ideate, produce, and refine belongings quicker, whereas preserving artistic uniqueness and unlocking new codecs like artificial video and multimodal storytelling.
As McKinsey’s Expertise Development Outlook 2025 notes, “Those that act with focus and agility is not going to solely unlock new worth but additionally form the way forward for their industries and the way forward for right this moment’s rising frontier applied sciences.”
Media and leisure prospects right this moment are embracing what it means to be a Frontier Agency by main with imaginative and prescient, investing in expertise and know-how, and boldly experimenting to form the way forward for leisure and drive {industry} transformation. The Frontier Corporations of media and leisure should not outlined by the dimensions of their library or attain, however by the boldness to reimagine how tales are created, how groups collaborate, and the way worth is found in each second. Microsoft helps organizations world wide construct the inspiration for this future.
The subsequent wave for media shouldn’t be about automating yesterday’s processes however somewhat about reimagining your entire again workplace operation and manufacturing pipeline. From streamlining editorial workflows to managing the complete content material lifecycle, leaders in media and leisure are searching for instruments that free groups to concentrate on storytelling innovation as an alternative of guide duties. Examples of our prospects reimaging their enterprise operations embrace:
The Nationwide Soccer League (NFL) is likely one of the world’s hottest sports activities leagues, with 335 occasions every season and a whole bunch of tens of millions of followers throughout the globe renewed its partnership with Microsoft. Incorporating the brand new Microsoft options will assist drive innovation and improve the sport day expertise leaguewide from the sideline to crew headquarters to the league workplace. The NFL is implementing Microsoft Copilot and Azure AI to reinforce sideline analysis and workflows, scout new expertise, and streamline operations that hold the stadiums operating easily. The NFL added an AI assistant to its current Mix App, utilizing Azure OpenAI Service to ship quick, correct solutions to pure language questions in real-time. Groups now entry insights in seconds, serving to coaches and scouts consider expertise quicker—even whereas athletes are nonetheless on the sphere.
The Nationwide Basketball Affiliation (NBA) remodeled fan engagement, operational agility, and knowledge safety by migrating to Microsoft Azure—unlocking real-time insights, scalable AI innovation, and personalised digital experiences throughout its world ecosystem.
The Indiana Pacers use Azure AI Speech to create an answer that delivers real-time captions with the velocity and accuracy required for a stay game-day expertise. Utilizing Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, Pacers Sports activities & Leisure pioneered a real-time captioning system that transforms stay basketball into an inclusive, immersive expertise for deaf, hard-of-hearing, and non-English-speaking followers redefining accessibility in sports activities.
LaLiga makes use of Microsoft Azure Arc to unify cloud and on-premises operations throughout 42 stadiums, enabling low-latency AI-powered insights and seamless fan experiences that enhance productiveness, safety, and engagement.
Dentsu applied Microsoft Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI Providers to construct a predictive analytics copilot that helps media insights, reducing evaluation time by 80% and total time to perception by 90%.
Kantar modernized its world IT infrastructure utilizing Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline endpoint administration, scale back expensive guide processes, and enhance worker productiveness—in the end enhancing shopper outcomes via improved operational effectivity.
The Worldwide Tennis Federation (ITF) remodeled match-day technique and training effectiveness by deploying Microsoft Azure Databricks, Azure SQL Database, Floor gadgets, and Azure Knowledge Lake to ship real-time efficiency insights via the Billie Jean King Cup Match Insights app, empowering athletes and coaches with data-driven selections.
Empowering content material creators
For media and leisure, Microsoft Copilot is an clever assistant creators have at all times wanted—from answering easy knowledge inquiries to supporting superior manufacturing work that was as soon as out of attain. By placing AI together with each editor, producer, and storyteller, we’re not simply making processes quicker—we’re increasing what’s doable. Meaning extra capability for creativity, stronger content material lifecycles, and measurable enterprise affect at each stage.
WPP’s T&Pm company revolutionized artistic workflows by utilizing Microsoft Azure OpenAI and Sora to quickly prototype and scale personalised video content material—enabling quicker manufacturing, deeper experimentation, and extra emotionally resonant storytelling throughout world campaigns.
Penguin Random Home (a subsidiary of Bertelsmann), the world’s largest ebook writer, partnered with Microsoft to deal with the European Union Accessibility Act and promote inclusivity by automating the era of high-quality, context-aware different textual content for pictures in over 160,000 eBooks. Utilizing Azure and Azure AI Foundry, the answer extracts picture context from digital books and generates descriptive captions, dramatically decreasing guide effort whereas guaranteeing compliance. The initiative not solely enhances accessibility for visually impaired readers but additionally delivers projected annual financial savings of USD1.5 to 1.8 million.
“Our collaboration with Microsoft’s Trade Options Engineering crew has enabled us to fulfill the necessities of the EU Accessibility Act and proceed our quest to make accessible content material for all our readers. Constructing on the Azure platform allowed us to make the most of out-of-the-box safety and performance to craft an economical answer that pulled collectively environment friendly compute features alongside AI Foundry. Our means to construct rapidly in a managed setting will permit us to ship compliant and accessible content material in a fraction of the time and value.”
—Chris Hart, Vice President at Penguin Random Home
By integrating options like Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service, Dentsu is accelerating each stage of the artistic cycle—from brainstorming and briefing to marketing campaign execution and efficiency evaluation. Idea artwork and marketing campaign belongings that when took weeks can now be produced in days and even hours, assembly the rising expectations of shoppers for velocity and high quality. In reality, 62% of their surveyed customers reported a noticeable enchancment within the high quality of content material created with Microsoft 365 Copilot, whereas groups are gaining deeper insights into marketing campaign efficiency and viewers segmentation.1
“Copilot helps shut the loop after a marketing campaign goes stay, enabling creators to rapidly decide what’s working and why—making it an indispensable companion for contemporary artistic groups”
—Kate Slade, Head of Accountable AI, Dentsu
HyperCinema transforms stay leisure by utilizing Azure OpenAI to generate hyper personalised, real-time storytelling experiences that immerse visitors in model worlds—scaling effortlessly throughout exhibitions, theme parks, and retail venues.
Pixar Animation Studios democratized high-fidelity rendering for world creators by leveraging Microsoft Azure HPC, enabling anybody—from college students to professionals—to take part in its RenderMan® Problem with scalable cloud compute energy.
Elevating fan engagement and unlocking monetization
The actual alternative for media and leisure lies within the synergy of AI and knowledge. By unifying content material alerts with viewers conduct in actual time, AI is unlocking new methods for engagement and monetization. It’s not nearly driving the following click on—it’s about creating responsive experiences that construct lasting loyalty. When knowledge turns into actionable via AI, media and leisure prospects are connecting tales to audiences in ways in which had been by no means doable.
Premier League is redefining the fan expertise with its new fan-facing digital platforms that leverage Microsoft’s cloud and AI applied sciences to usher in a brand new period of clever and intuitive fan experiences. This partnership marks one of the crucial vital technological transformations within the league’s historical past, anchored round 4 key areas: fan engagement, match insights and evaluation, cloud transformation, and organizational productiveness. Leveraging Azure AI Foundry and OpenAI, the partnership will ship real-time match knowledge, interactive evaluation, and safe media experiences—setting a brand new customary for world sports activities know-how.
Main League Soccer (MLS) remodeled its fan engagement technique by integrating Microsoft Azure AI into its revamped league app, delivering real-time match insights, personalised content material, and interactive options via the brand new Sidekick companion expertise. Sidekick makes use of agentic AI to anticipate fan wants—delivering real-time match insights and personalised content material precisely when followers need it. Co-developed with Microsoft and OpenAI, Sidekick adapts to every consumer, testing and refining engagement to maximise relevance for tens of millions of followers.
The NBA remodeled its world fan engagement and operational agility by migrating to Microsoft Azure and Azure OpenAI Service, enabling real-time knowledge insights, scalable AI innovation, enhanced safety, and personalised digital experiences throughout its ecosystem.
Artwork Basel remodeled world artwork truthful experiences by deploying Microsoft Azure AI Foundry and Copilot to energy a safe, real-time companion app that bridges bodily and digital worlds, enabling on the spot paintings recognition, personalised steering, and deeper customer engagement throughout 5 worldwide cities.
Fukuoka SoftBank HAWKS revolutionizes the stadium expertise by deploying a lifelike AI avatar of retired star Ryota Igarashi—powered by Microsoft Azure AI—to have interaction followers in actual time, driving full-season suite sellouts and redefining digital fan interplay. The AI avatar, skilled to match Igarashi’s intonation, velocity, and lip sync, seems on a big show and communicates in actual time, answering questions from customers, giving participant data, commenting on the present recreation, and cheering for the SoftBank HAWKS.
Common Locations & Experiences, a division of Comcast, is remodeling theme park operations and visitor experiences by leveraging Microsoft Azure and Azure Knowledge Explorer to ship real-time knowledge insights, improve personalization, and streamline digital innovation throughout its world sights.
AI-powered Microsoft platform permits ecosystem co-innovation
Microsoft gives complete cloud and AI options that allow media and leisure companies to enhance effectivity, ship personalised and fascinating experiences, and unlock new income. As platform-first firm, we additionally empower our companion ecosystem with AI-platform, Azure cloud infrastructure, and sturdy instruments to increase Microsoft gives or construct industry-specific options that drive actual enterprise affect. Uncover how a few of our main companions are shaping the way forward for media and leisure:
Adobe Expertise Cloud and Dynamics 365 combine seamlessly with Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing AI-powered advertising and marketing instantly into Outlook, Microsoft Groups, and Phrase. Media groups can now create campaigns, handle approvals, and monitor efficiency—all inside acquainted workflows, accelerating time-to-market and scaling viewers engagement.
MediaKind and DAZN delivered the FIFA Membership World Cup 2025 globally utilizing Azure’s cloud-native infrastructure, enabling dynamic scaling and broadcast-quality streaming for tens of millions of followers.
Assist Companions’ Catalyst, constructed on Azure, empowers retailers to automate video manufacturing with brand-trained AI brokers—reducing prices and delivering content material quicker throughout each channel.
SOUTHWORKS, MediaKind, and Microsoft Safety launched the primary Media Safety Copilot, defending streaming workflows and guaranteeing content material safety at each stage.
Cognizant helps media organizations modernize enterprise processes by deploying Dynamics 365 into core workflows, enabling them to take full benefit of Microsoft’s AI platform to unlock effectivity and perception.
UIC Digital is leveraging our complete AI know-how stack to automate stay broadcasts, full with real-time language translation and personalised experiences that deliver occasions nearer to audiences in every single place.
At IBC, IPV is unveiling Curator’s subsequent evolution, powered by Azure Content material Understanding and Microsoft Foundry APIs for superior picture and video era.
From advertising and marketing and sports activities to safety and artistic workflows, Microsoft and its companion ecosystem are redefining what’s doable—serving to media and leisure firms invent the way forward for storytelling with AI.
Be part of the motion of Frontier Agency
The way forward for media and leisure is being written right this moment by organizations that mix human creativity with AI-powered intelligence. Be part of the motion. Be part of us at IBC 2025, attend periods, take a look at demos, and meet with Microsoft executives who’re accelerating frontier creativity with AI. Try this doc for particulars of Microsoft presence at IBC2025.
1 An upcoming commissioned Complete Financial Impression™ research of Microsoft’s Gen AI and Agentic AI Options for media and leisure organizations carried out by Forrester Consulting, 2025.
Silvia Candiani
Vice President WW Telecommunications, Media and Gaming, Microsoft
Silvia Candiani leads Microsoft’s Worldwide Telecommunications, Media and Gaming Trade, overseeing {industry} technique, go-to-market plan, ecosystem development, and answer improvement. Silvia was previously CEO of Microsoft Italy, centered on accelerating digital transformation. Previous to Microsoft, Silvia led Shopper Advertising for Vodafone in Italy and was beforehand a guide at McKinsey within the Media and Telecommunication industries. She has a BA from Bocconi College and an MBA from INSEAD. Silvia can be a member of the Bocconi College Alumni Advisory Board and Lavazza Group.
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