United StatesMedia and entertainment2023 – ongoingESPN
AI closed captioning for live sports
ESPN cut closed-captioning costs by more than 50% with Azure AI
Problem
ESPN relied on people to transcribe events for closed captioning. It wanted to lower operating costs and make live transcription more efficient.
Approach
The ESPN Edge Innovation Center selected Azure as its primary cloud platform. ESPN used Azure AI to automate real-time closed captioning for its programming.
Results
more than 50%reduction in closed-captioning costs using Azure AI, per Microsoft
Takeaway
ESPN reported a specific cost reduction from automating captioning, a recurring production task that also supported accessibility.
Categories
- Size
- Large enterprise
- Industry
- Media and entertainment
- Business function
- Production and quality
- Innovation type
- Process innovation
- AI technology
- Conversational and voice AI
- Adoption
- Off-the-shelf tool or platform
- Goal
- Cost savings
- Evidence
- Vendor case study
Sources
Source summaries
[1]Microsoft4 Apr 2023
Microsoft reported that ESPN replaced manual event transcription with automated closed captioning using Azure AI. It reported that closed-captioning costs fell by more than 50%.
Full details are in the original sources.
Added 4 Nov 2026 · Updated 4 Nov 2026