For most of the world, “football” has nothing to do with tackles and oblong balls. No, for most of the world, football is just “soccer.” Regardless, tech giant Microsoft (MSFT) recently made a deal that will make it a very real part of football’s operations in a new partnership with English Premier League. Investors were less than interested, though, as shares slipped fractionally in Tuesday afternoon’s trading.
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The new deal calls for Microsoft to incorporate its Copilot AI system into the English Premier League App. With that integration comes the ability to access, and present, over 300,000 articles on the League, as well as over 9,000 videos, and statistics on teams and players going back over 30 years to the League’s founding in 1992.
That is not all, though; future developments include on-the-fly text and audio translation into several different languages, as well as a push for the Fantasy Premier League operations. The value of the deal, however, was kept mum; no one knows how much English Premier League had to shell out for Microsoft to step in and offer this array of AI-driven features. Microsoft, for its part, looks forward to providing the serve, as executive vice president and chief commercial officer Judson Althoff noted: “…we will transform how football is experienced, delivered, and managed on and off the field.”
Can’t..or Won’t?
Meanwhile, there is a problem mounting in Microsoft’s Xbox operations. A founding team member, Laura Fryer, recently noted that Microsoft’s Xbox operations are a disaster. She referred to the current roadmap as “chaos,” a development we recently noted here ourselves. Fryer also noted, in a disturbing sound bite, that “…Xbox has no desire—or literally can’t—ship hardware anymore.”
Fryer noted that much of Microsoft’s gaming presence these days lies in pushing fans into the recurring revenue pile that is Game Pass. That is a great plan short-term, but long-term, Fryer questions what, if anything, the plan actually is. With Xbox about to celebrate its 25th anniversary next year, questions are on the rise: just what is an Xbox? What will it look like? Will it even exist in another three to five years?
Is Microsoft a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on MSFT stock based on 30 Buys and four Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 8.3% rally in its share price over the past year, the average MSFT price target of $521.41 per share implies 5.6% upside potential.
