Australian Open Avatars Helping Tennis Reach New Audience

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.

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