The iconic Wimbledon Championships start on Monday, and looking ahead of the stand-out event in the Tennis calendar we’ll be going through what digital activations are around and about.

Where can you watch it?

First and foremost, the BBC are following-up last years’ Olympics Coverage with a similar 360 approach to Wimbledon. Viewers will be able to enjoy up to 10 live streams at once via computer, tablet, mobile and TV. Alongside this, there will be regular highlight clips and a regular column with Andy Murray on BBC Sport.

Sony haven’t got any headline Wimbledon activations but they, in conjunction with the BBC, are reported to be trialling their Ultra HD equipment that will allow them to capture 4K footage of Wimbledon. The BBC will then direct and use to record matches in the new format.

UPDATE: Wimbledon Social Section

On a daily basis Wimbledon, in partnership with IBM will be producing some social stats in relation to the day’s play. This is a great addition and emphasises Wimbledon’s commitment to social media in 2013. For example, today, Wimbledon announced:

– Most positively tweeted about
– Mentions of players
– Total Wimbledon-related tweets
– Tweets/minute or second
– Peak Twitter reach

The page also tracks popular hashtags, showing all photos under a competition hashtag of #shotoftheday and also showing all the Wimbledon social streams. It’s definitely worth a look.

The Official App

Wimbledon’s mobile app “in partnership with IBM” has been improved since last year, and alongside the latest news feed, scoreboard, schedule, photos, and video highlights, there will be “Live  @ Wimbledon Radio”, where users can listen to three channels covering The Championships and live match commentary.

The app allows users to follow the progress of specific players and receive push notification alerts throughout the Championships. The app is available on iOS and Android for free.

IBM’s SlamTracker

On top of this, IBM and Wimbledon have a statistics-based activation called “SlamTracker”. This has been used already this season, but is definitely worth checking out. SlamTracker is an online dashboard that provides match-by-match predictions and analysis based on seven years’ worth of Grand Slam data, which works out at about 39 million data points. The system tracks data surrounding match outcomes by looking at a player’s aces, faults, errors, playing surface, and more. The dashboard then predicts the patterns likely to emerge in a pending matchup.

To all those thinking they could use it to win a few quid at the bookies, John Kent, program manager of IBM Worldwide Sponsorship Marketing, said:

“It’s not a prediction who will win; it’s a look at what each player needs to do well to have a higher likelihood of winning.”

For example, the dashboard will reveal that a player will need to win more than 72% of points on first serves or convert more than 60% of break point opportunities.  At the French Open, Djokovic, managed to win more than 48% of three-to-eight-shot rallies against Nadal, as SlamTracker prescribed, but he failed to win more than 44% of first-serve return points.

What else are the sponsors cooking up?

Jacobs Creek:              

Jacobs Creek are running a Facebook app to win 1 of 100 pairs of tickets for Wimbledon. They’re asking the user to share their Wimbledon stories to be in with a chance of winning. It’s a little dull, and it’s not made particularly obvious in what shape these stories are to be submitted but it’s worth having a look at. Jacobs Creek currently have hidden areas of the app, such as behind the scenes features, that will eventually liven it up.

Evian:

Evian have launched an ambitious campaign called the ‘Wimbledon Wiggle’. This focuses upon the stance made by players awaiting a serve and preparing a return. The Facebook app encourages users to submit their ‘wiggle’ to be in with a chance of winning Wimbledon tickets. As well as a Facebook app, Evian have a dedicated area on the Wimbledon.com website: http://evian.wimbledon.com/

Here’s the promo video and dedicated song:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6xLwqaaDwI]

Slazenger:

Slazenger are giving away tickets to Wimbledon on Twitter. In a competition that could have been integrated with Facebook, users need to guess the number of tennis balls in a glass case to win tickets to the Wimbledon Final. It’s not clear where the case is positioned but it would have been nice to situate in a busy area of London as the case has the hashtag and call to action on the front.

We’ll match best guess in £ to @RoscoHutchins charity.Tweet @SlazengerSport #SlazengerBalls &win @Wimbledon final tix pic.twitter.com/vgIFwAjWYB

— SlazengerSport (@SlazengerSport) June 19, 2013

Robinsons:

Have followed a similar vein to Jacobs Creek and have launched a simple Facebook app with a “Spot the Ball” contest. The app is very one-dimensional, and could have been a lot better but it will no-doubt provide Robinsons with Likes, entries and data. Chosen winners will get VIP tickets to Wimbledon or Wimbledon merchandise.