I like watching random sports on YouTube so saw this yesterday. I could only manage a minute, it was just bizarre. It did make me wonder how I could watch the Australia Open, but I wasn't willing to subscribe to ESPN to see it.
Not bad advertising really.
Love it. I'm surprised they're allowed to use the audio, though. In the USA, the licensing notices specifically prohibit use of even "the descriptions" that appear in a broadcast.
I suppose they'll close that loophole in other countries.
The whole regime is a big F-U to fans, and to the taxpayers who subsidize these teams out the wazoo.
Let's do this for baseball.. would probably make everything way more interesting
At one point data for every MLB game was available from MLB.com. I started writing a RBI baseball simulator using said data and the graphics from the NES game. But then I realized I'm not that good at programming but I still think it would've been neat to watch game 3 of the 1970 world series as played out by 1985 video game graphics.
You can ask Claude / Cursor to do most of it these days
this 100% sounds like a project I'd see at the top of the front page on a Saturday
MLB does something similar called Gameday 3D. https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-gameday-3d-guide
The main difference is that it's rendered client side so you can control the camera for yourself. You can watch in real time during the season, the latency is around 30 seconds behind live action.
MLB StarCast generates ~7TB of data per game. I assume the bulk of that is video from the high speed cameras.
"the Australian Open’s own channel has streamed select matches using cartoonish avatars of players instead of the actual broadcast."
LOL - but why not? They need to do this for every sport.
Instead of filling NFL game broadcasts with absurd amounts of graphics overlaid on camera footage, we could go the opposite direction and show minimalist renderings of live NFL games. Revolutionary.
I assume eventually there will be an upsell product that allows you to watch with a 3D/VR courtside view. I’m kind of surprised it doesn’t exist already. I think Apple would sell a few more headsets if they made this happen.
Somewhat halfway would be a slightly delayed version of the game using much better-in-hindsight decisions about which camera angles to show during a play.
Then plug in another AI that maps the cartoons back to deepfakes of the original players, and the circle of life is complete.
There's a startup here for someone . . .
Could even work for CSPAN, QuestionTime, and other political coverage ..
Presidential debates... perhaps the viewers could even choose their favorite skin etc.
it is always two clowns debating so this would TOTALLY work :)
Monetize through hats and outfits...
Doesn't this harm the long-term value of AOs rights sales to the broadcasters?
If I know AO is going to broadcast on youtube, why am I as a European broadcaster going to pay them the same amount as I did when they weren't trying to work against me?
I don’t think long-term value is their guiding star, if their previous NFT forays are anything to go by
Yeah it very much feels like a case of biting the hand that feeds. What’s the long term goal of AO by doing this?
It’s weird how invisible tennis is on television in Europe.
I was traveling in Spain and Italy last year when Roland Garros was on, which included major highlights like Nadal’s (likely) last ever match there and strong performances from European players like Alcaraz, Sinner, Tsitsipas and Zverev (indeed almost all of the current top ten men are European).
But it was only on the pay channel EuroSport, which most homes (and thus Airbnbs) don’t have, and was only available for us in one upmarket hotel in Spain we stayed in for an indulgence for one night.
So the tournament promoters may be making the calculation that if the current TV rights holders aren’t ultimately getting many eyeballs watching their events, they need to do other things to build/maintain the profile sport of the sport with a view to one day offering it only via the internet (particularly if broadcast TV continues to decline and the networks can no longer afford large rights deals).
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Survival amid viewer shifts away from traditional broadcasts.
The people who they sell the rights to are less valuable partners, so AO feels comfortable making them a less valuable offer while pursuing other audiences.
Nothing like a bit of synthetic tennis:
Is there a level of fidelity at which the animated character becomes an issue? Are we going to be seeing unreal engine powered photorealistic characters before this loophole is closed?
Does the rights holder have to specify that the motion data is not acceptable for rebroadcast?
On the surface this seems like a cheap abuse of loopholes and any broadcast partner would be looking at them askance and consulting contacts and lawyers...
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If you missed the best at the bottom, it turns out that Tennis Australia does VC investing too now:
> Tennis Australia has funded several startups through its venture capital fund as it looks to push into the technology space, including a failed flirtation with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that concluded last year.
> The fund, AO Ventures, is worth US$30 million (A$41.8 million) and includes support from Tesla chair Robyn Denholm’s Wollemi Capital Group (which also has investments in the NBL and the Sydney Kings), as well as Art Gallery of NSW chair Mark Nelson and Packer confidante Ashok Jacob.