Toni gets an upgrade and is now the chatbot for European football

Posted on 2016-10-13 in Toni's Diary by Klemens 

The chatbot for Facebook Messenger was developed and enhanced in the past few weeks and now supports all major European leagues, including the English Premier League. The subscriptions were improved now aligning them with Facebook’s new guidelines.

Vienna- Toni is back! Originally the chatbot was developed for the European Championships in France as “Toni, the Euro 2016 Bot”. At the time, the Bot was conceived more of a proof-of-concept for chatbots in general, not as a finished product. Because of his success, the audience decided not to send Toni back to the locker rooms after the European Championships. On the contrary, Toni was fitted with new features and at this point knows the most important national European Leagues (1st and 2nd German Bundesliga, Premier League in England, Primera División in Spain, Serie A in Italy) as well as the Champions League. At present, Toni is available on the Facebook Messenger platform and users can start a conversation at m.me/tonichatbot or by scanning the blue Facebook QR code in the Messenger app.

A new logo is giving the Bot a new character- Toni is the personal assistant, who keeps everyone interested in football informed. Toni supports all time zones worldwide and is available in German as well as English. This means the users will see the starting time of matches in their actual time zone.

Klemens Zleptnig, CEO of creative workline GmbH in Vienna, Austria, explains: “Even if there is an enormous amount of hype about chatbots right now- there will continue to be apps and graphical user interfaces. But bots are extremely well suited to areas in which the user would prefer to automate tasks, or if the interaction should resemble human conversation. Interest in having this concept replicated in other areas of sports is evident and shows great potential.

Based on this, Toni’s subscription services were improved, taking into consideration the new, stricter guidelines for the Facebook Messenger platform’s Subscription Messaging. By use of these subscriptions, the users are automatically informed about their preferred leagues. For instance, if they are interested in the English Premier League, they can subscribe to a daily summary of matches, which is then sent out by Toni every morning. Additionally, users can subscribe to live updates, meaning Toni can send (almost) real-time messages as soon as a match begins or a goal is scored. For the future, plans exist to enable subscription to individual teams, for example Bayern Munich.

Of course Toni will continue to answer questions and commands, such as “When is Real Madrid playing Barcelona?”, “Who is playing tomorrow?” or “Show me the table”. The football bot is available on all platforms including Android, iOS and the Web for free, and no download or registration is necessary.

creative workline GmbH is the company responsible for the creation and technical realization of Toni. The company has been successful as an agency providing app market solutions for many years.

Media contact:

creative workline GmbH
Mr Klemens Zleptnig
Phone: +43 1 3059571

E-mail: toni@creativeworkline.at

You can find further media information and images at Press & Media.

TAGS:  Bot, BotSpot Vienna, Bundesliga, Chatbot, Facebook, Football, Messenger, Premier League, Press Release, Soccer, Toni