[AI Revolution](168) "Moneyball 2.0" Choroksoft... Designing Sports Victories with AI

Interview with Kim Myungrak, CEO of Choroksoft
Aiming to Become the Palantir Technologies of the Sports Industry
"WOMBET": Conversational AI Optimized for Sports

In the 2011 film "Moneyball," Billy Beane, the general manager of the perpetually bottom-ranked Major League Baseball team Oakland Athletics, hires an economics major and achieves results by selecting players in a completely new way. Instead of relying on reputation or salary, he chooses those who can help the team win based solely on data. This is called Sports Data Analysis (SDA). Choroksoft is a company pioneering a new paradigm in the Korean sports industry through SDA. The difference from the movie is that, instead of humans, artificial intelligence (AI) conducts the analysis. The company’s technological expertise, accumulated over more than a decade of dedicated AI research, supports this approach.

On September 19, Kim Myungrak, CEO of Choroksoft, said, "We aim to become the Palantir Technologies of the sports industry." Palantir is an American data analytics company that has rapidly grown by providing AI-based big data platforms to organizations such as the CIA and the Department of Defense. Just as Palantir has solved clients' problems in the defense sector with AI technology, Kim’s goal is to make Choroksoft the go-to solution for AI needs in the sports industry.

Kim Myungrak, CEO of Choroksoft, is taking a commemorative photo in the office after the interview. Choroksoft

Choroksoft has taken one step at a time toward this goal, learning from various trials and errors along the way. Kim explained, "Since founding Choroksoft in 2015, we have maintained the company without any external investment, providing customized services from AI-related consulting to development." He added, "We have 20 patents related to AI." Building on this foundation, Kim has continued to invest in SDA. However, it took time for the AI-based SDA market to mature in Korea. In the past, SDA relied on a handful of former athletes manually analyzing data, which created high barriers to entry. Later, deep learning AI technology was introduced to SDA, but data collection and development incurred enormous costs.

Having gone through these challenges, Kim believes that the emergence of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT has finally opened the AI-based SDA market in earnest. He said, "LLMs enable the development of AI models at a much lower cost than previous deep learning models and have dramatically reduced data collection expenses." He added, "Perceptions of AI have also changed, so I expect much less resistance on the sports field now."

As Kim noted, the outlook for the SDA market has brightened thanks to new AI technologies. In the United States, where sports analysis using AI is active, the SDA market is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 30% to reach approximately $5.57 billion by 2030. Kim stated, "The adoption of AI in SDA is also accelerating in Korea," and explained, "AI not only reduces costs and increases accuracy but also enables real-time analysis." For example, analyses that once could only be done after a game can now be delivered in real time during matches and incorporated into strategies. Furthermore, the analytical know-how continues to accumulate within the team.

Kim Myungrak, CEO of Choroksoft, is being interviewed by Asia Economy. Choroksoft

To make its SDA technology easily accessible, Choroksoft has developed a conversational AI called "WOMBET," which is currently being piloted. This LLM is specialized for the sports sector. Kim explained, "You can think of it as a sports-optimized ChatGPT." Rather than simply listing collected data, the system presents the probability of a team winning and explains the reasoning, such as recent scoring performance and the condition of key players.

As an AI expert, Kim’s dedication to the sports sector stems from his belief in the value of sports. He has always been inspired by athletes working together as a team and giving their best. Now, he believes that value can shine even brighter through his area of expertise, AI. He said, "We will first think about how to solve customers’ problems with AI-whether it’s predicting player performance, identifying marketing points to increase audience numbers, ensuring team victories, or developing salary policies-and approach each challenge accordingly."