SBot began as an AI personality on the 2024 IRONMAN Pro Series broadcast, using race and series data to make and update podium predictions as events unfolded.
In 2025, it became an internal assistant connected to ticketing, timekeeping, expenses, equipment, and schedules. Those lessons led to SBot Labs, web and iOS tools that combine GPS, competition data, and broadcast graphics for live race production.
How an AI personality on the 2024 IRONMAN Pro Series broadcast grew into an internal assistant—and then into SBot Labs.
SBot’s first home was a ticker at the bottom of a race broadcast.
During the 2024 IRONMAN Pro Series season, we introduced SBot—short for Sports Bot—as an AI personality that could follow the data, make its picks for podium contention, and update its predictions as the race unfolded.
Since then, its role has grown well beyond the screen. Beginning in 2025, we brought SBot into our daily work at BCC Live, connecting it to the systems our team uses to manage tickets, time, expenses, equipment, and schedules. The lessons from that work helped shape SBot Labs: web and iOS tools built to help us and our customers create great race graphics quickly.
Here’s how those three chapters connect.
2024: A Sports Bot with a view of the race
SBot began with a specific broadcast role: give the IRONMAN Pro Series ticker an AI personality connected to what was happening in the sport.
We gave it tools to retrieve the latest available race and series statistics. With that information, SBot could make its top picks for podium contention and revisit those picks as new data came in during the race.
That ability to update mattered. A prediction made before the start is one thing; a view that responds to a changing race is another. The ticker gave SBot a place to bring that evolving perspective into the broadcast.
It also established a principle that runs through everything we have built since: useful AI needs access to the right information. The personality gave SBot a voice. Its connection to data gave that voice context.
2025: From the broadcast into our daily workflow
Voice control of Viz Flowics in SBot Assistant
Starting in 2025, we began integrating SBot into SBot Assistant, our internal team app. Its remit expanded from following a race to helping with the work that surrounds one.
This meant building more than a chat window. We developed a harness around the AI: the functions, tools, access rules, and approval steps that let it navigate our systems and help with real tasks.
Today, that integration reaches three practical parts of our operation:
- ConnectWise Manage: Our ticketing, expense, and timekeeping system. SBot can help find tickets and projects, inspect their details, review time and expense records, and prepare actions such as internal notes, time entries, and expenses for approval.
- Equipment inventory: SBot helps us document and catalog our internal equipment. It can search equipment records and individual units, work with kits and pack lists, and prepare updates to the information we maintain about our gear.
- Team schedules: SBot can retrieve the schedule and event details available to the signed-in teammate, then help them navigate to the relevant information in the app.
The connection between conversation and the app is important. If a teammate asks about a ticket or a piece of equipment, the assistant can help them reach that record—not just describe where they might find it. When a task involves changing data, preparation and approval are part of the workflow.
This work gave us a practical foundation for the next chapter: connecting AI to existing systems, keeping context intact, and making it clear when a suggestion becomes an action.
SBot Labs: Bringing those lessons back to the broadcast
We then took what we had learned from our internal tools and applied it to a challenge close to home: helping production teams create great race graphics quickly.
The result is SBot Labs, with a web app and an iOS app that connect competition information, athlete data, courses, GPS, and broadcast graphics.
The iOS app can transmit GPS from the field. The web app gives the production team a place to work with that live information and design and control graphics. Maps, course profiles, player cards, lower thirds, and other overlays can sit within the same competition workflow, with browser-source output for systems such as OBS and TriCaster.
SBot Labs also brings the assistant into that workspace. It can help users find relevant competition and overlay information and prepare supported changes for approval. The aim is to shorten the path from having the data to putting a useful graphic on air, while keeping the production team in control.
We put that approach to work at the 2026 Lauf Gravel Worlds broadcast. As we covered the race, SBot Labs tracked camera operators riding alongside the lead and chase groups. Their positions supported live split information and graphics such as maps and elevation profiles. It was a concrete example of field data feeding the production workflow.
Different jobs. One continuous story.
The original SBot helped tell the story of a race. SBot Assistant brought that tool-connected approach into the everyday work of our team. SBot Labs carries those lessons back into live production, with tools we can use ourselves and build for our customers.
That is the thread connecting a broadcast ticker, an equipment catalog, a time entry, and a live race graphic: making the information people need easier to find and more useful in the moment they need it.
Want to explore how SBot Labs could fit your next race broadcast? Talk with BCC Live about your event and graphics workflow.
