Australian Open Avatars Helping Tennis Reach New Audience 12
The Australian Open has introduced a project called AO Animated -- "near-live, commentated coverage of the Australian Open, free to anyone across the world via YouTube, enhanced via a stream of comments from a like-minded online community," reports The Guardian. Blending real-world data with virtual avatars, the animated coverage has garnered significant viewer interest, especially among gamers and tech enthusiasts. From the report: [I]t's no surprise a project called AO Animated has taken off at this year's grand slam tournament at Melbourne Park. The catch? The players, ball and court are all computer-generated. That hasn't dissuaded hundreds of thousands of viewers from tuning into this vision of the Australian Open, featuring video game-like avatars but using real-world data in an emerging category of sports broadcasting helping tennis reach new fans.
The loophole allows the Australian Open to show a version of live events at the tournament on its own channels, despite having sold lucrative exclusive broadcast rights to partners across the globe. The technology made its debut at the grand slam last year and audiences peaked for the men's final, the recording of which has attracted almost 800,000 views on YouTube. Interest appears to be trending up this year and the matches are attracting roughly four times as many viewers than the equivalent time in 2024.
The director of innovation at Tennis Australia, Machar Reid, said although the technology was far from polished it was developing quickly. "Limb tracking is complex, you've got 12 cameras trying to process the silhouette of the human in real time, and stitch that together across 29 points in the skeleton," he said. "It's not as seamless as it could be -- we don't have fingers -- but in time you can begin to imagine a world where that comes." The data from sensors on the court is ingested and fed into a system that can produce the graphic reproduction with a two-minute delay. The same commentary and arena noises that would otherwise be heard on the television -- as well as interstitial vision direct from the broadcast -- are synced with the virtual representation of the match.
The loophole allows the Australian Open to show a version of live events at the tournament on its own channels, despite having sold lucrative exclusive broadcast rights to partners across the globe. The technology made its debut at the grand slam last year and audiences peaked for the men's final, the recording of which has attracted almost 800,000 views on YouTube. Interest appears to be trending up this year and the matches are attracting roughly four times as many viewers than the equivalent time in 2024.
The director of innovation at Tennis Australia, Machar Reid, said although the technology was far from polished it was developing quickly. "Limb tracking is complex, you've got 12 cameras trying to process the silhouette of the human in real time, and stitch that together across 29 points in the skeleton," he said. "It's not as seamless as it could be -- we don't have fingers -- but in time you can begin to imagine a world where that comes." The data from sensors on the court is ingested and fed into a system that can produce the graphic reproduction with a two-minute delay. The same commentary and arena noises that would otherwise be heard on the television -- as well as interstitial vision direct from the broadcast -- are synced with the virtual representation of the match.
Sorry for the off topic but (Score:2)
Pretty much had to disable javascript just to use this site. What a pita.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not so much the JavaScript. But some advertisers are loading content from known scammer sites. Which my ISP blocks and results in frequent 'Unable to connect' nag popups.
Ad issue's been fixed (Score:1)
I've seen several comments saying the ad issue has been fixed. Try going back to your previous ad/script-block settings and try again. You should be Slashdotting like it's 2024 in no time.
Re: (Score:2)
On Firefox mobile it's got me stuck in an infinite reload glitch without javascript disabled. Not sure if the desktop at home will have the same problem.
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Okay it looks like only the mobile site is affected. It's busted.
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Might give mailto:feedback@slashdot.org [mailto] a try.
Similar to Sony's Beyond Sports (Score:1)
From The Guardian article [theguardian.com]:
Similar projects have been undertaken in other sports, including an NFL [United States's National [gridiron] Football League] broadcast with an animated Simpsons theme in December, and a special in American ice hockey.
I think the NFL-Simpsons mashup was put together by Sony's Beyond Sports brand, but I could be mistaken.
What is this 'tennis' you speak of? (Score:3)
In my state the game is controversial because it's played on pickleball courts, and two adjacent courts must be combined to make one tennis court.
Expected Response (Score:3)
The two top YouTube comments (of four total) speak the truth:
This video is entirely unnecessary.
Why Animated???
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect this has far more to do with the broadcast copyrights. The original video feeds shown anywhere that doesn't involve sending lots of money to ESPN (or whomever purchased the broadcast rights) are very quickly hammered through copyright claims. These digital representations are not. This may be new to tennis but has been going on for various sports for a couple of years now.
It's horrendous.