Tech giant IBM (IBM) and sports network ESPN (DIS) renewed their partnership to bring advanced AI technology to fantasy football through IBM’s watsonx platform. Indeed, for the 2025 season, the companies launched a new feature in the ESPN Fantasy Football app called “Fantasy Insights Built with IBM watsonx,” which gives over 14 million users personalized AI-powered recommendations.
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Interestingly, these suggestions are based on more than 36 billion data points that will be collected throughout the season to help users make better decisions when managing their fantasy teams. In addition, the new insights show up right on the app’s homepage and highlight players who are worth paying attention to each week. In fact, the system uses several data-based categories with specific rules to spot these players.
Some of the new categories include “Buy Low Sell High” (players who faced tough defenses but have easier matchups coming), “Diamond in the Rough” (under-the-radar players performing well), and “Trade Bait” (popular players who have struggled recently). There are also predictions like “Top Boom” and “Top Bust,” plus tags like “Media Darlings” for players who are gaining positive media buzz. Notably, ESPN powers all of this by using watsonx.data to organize data from many sources and feed it into these AI models.
Is IBM a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on IBM stock based on six Buys, six Holds, and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average IBM price target of $292.08 per share implies 2.7% upside potential.

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