The Australian Open's animated streams make tennis look like the WiiExBulletin

The Australian Open YouTube livestream shows the players as animated avatars, even though the action is real.

Australian Open TV/screenshot by NPR

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Australian Open TV/screenshot by NPR

Tennis fans around the world can stream Australian Open matches online, with a catch: the players on the screen are not real people, but video game-like avatars on a computer-generated court.

The tournament runs until January 26 sold his broadcasting rights to media companies around the world, limiting opportunities for live reporting. Instead, it uses animation to relay the action live his YouTube channel. The organizers hope that the creative solution will bring even more viewers to the first Grand Slam of the year and convince new fans.

“By integrating skeletal data with animated characters, this mixed-reality experience is designed to captivate a new generation of tennis fans, making the sport more accessible and engaging, especially for kids and families,” said Darren Pearce, Chief Content Officer of Tennis Australia. a statement.

Michael McCann, the director of the Institute for Sports and Entertainment Law at the University of New Hampshire, told NPR that while animated characters can certainly help bring in younger fans, they are “at least partly a way to cover the event in the absence of broadcast rights.”

The fact that rebroadcast rights are separated would explain why closed matches and highlights show the players in their human form, he added.

During live gameplay, however, the players and the general outlines and colors of their outfits are animated in a Nintendo Wii-like style, as are the court, rackets, balls, umpires, ball people, and spectators. The sounds, commentary and action are real, with only a delay of about two minutes.

One thing the players don't have? Fingers. Machar Reid, director of innovation at Tennis Australia, told The Guardian that the system with twelve cameras and 29 tracking points in the skeleton “is not as seamless as it could be, but over time you can start to imagine a world where that comes.”

The “animated feeds” quietly debuted during last year's Australian Open, according to the Associated press. This year it expanded to more competitions and seems to have made a much bigger impact.

Tennis Australia says streams received 950,000 views during the first four days of the tournament, compared with about 140,000 in the same period last year, the AP reports. NPR has contacted Tennis Australia for more information.

On social media, tweets And TikToks of the cartoonish players and standout moments, including Russian Daniil Medvedev destroying a net camera his racket has collected tens of thousands of likes.

The real players have also given their approval.

Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, four-time Grand Slam winner, called it “funny” and “a good option for people who want to watch tennis and can't.” Canadian Leylah Fernandez, who said she came across the animation by accident, called it “hilarious.”

McCann, the law professor, says it remains to be seen whether animation will play a bigger role in sports streaming in the future.

“It's obviously very different from watching a tennis match with people,” he said, pointing out the lack of facial expressions and other human qualities. “It seems like it arouses curiosity, but is this sustainable?”

The Australian Open is not the only or first sports organization to try to figure this out.

Looney Tunes on ice, the Simpsons take the field

American organizations, including the National Hockey League and National Football League, have been experimenting with animated broadcasts for years, albeit in a slightly different format.

The leagues have been working with rights holders since 2023 to incorporate characters, settings and animation styles from popular cartoon franchises into specially themed games.

“The common use of this practice is not to circumvent a broadcast restriction, but to import intellectual property into a broadcast and hope to attract a broader group of viewers,” McCann explains.

“It's a way to create a product that's maybe more geared towards young adults, but also younger people and also parents, parents who might not watch an NHL game but want to do that with their kids if it has characters that the kids are interested in. .”

The NFL, CBS Sports and Nickelodeon teamed up to bring SpongeBob and a whole lot of slime to one “child-oriented” broadcast of the 2024 Super Bowl, for example. ESPN and Disney presented one “Funday Football” Toy story animated game in 2023, and another with The Simpsons in December, featuring the canonical yellow characters on the field and sidelines, pre-recorded segments, and the show's theme song and jingles.

The NHL has conducted several such projects dating back to February 2023, when it partnered with ESPN and Disney for the NHL Great city vegetables Classic alive, animated broadcast of a showdown between Washington Capitals and New York Rangers, with players modeled after characters from the animated comedy-adventure series, which was revived the following year.

Also presented the MultiVersus NHL faceoffa collaboration with TNT Sports and Warner Bros. Games that feature beloved characters from the MultiVersus video game featuring Bugs Bunny, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Steven Universe to an animated match between the Colorado Avalanche and Vegas Golden Knights, led by the Tasmanian Devil.

“The whole premise of what we did the first two seasons was to create an experience that reached beyond the avid, if not even kind of semi-enthusiastic NHL fanbase, to try to attract a younger, more family-oriented audience ,” said David Lehanski, the NHL's executive vice president of business development and innovation.

And, he says, it worked.

Lehanski told NPR in an interview that while average broadcasts typically draw an audience that is about 60% male and 40% female, the animated broadcasts “basically turned that around.” He said they have also “lowered the average by about 25 years”, with a much smaller than normal percentage of viewers over 35. Lehanski said it also didn't take any traffic away from the regular live broadcast.

“What we've seen is a side-by-side look,” he said. “And that's what happened at my house. We had the traditional live game on ESPN and on an iPad we watched the animated version. And part of the appeal of the experience is actually seeing the two sacred cows side by side , it's like this is a real hockey game.”

Does animation sports have the future?

A screenshot of a livestream of Thursday's Australian Open match between Madison Keys and Elena-Gabriela Ruse. The Open's use of animation is causing a stir online.

Australian Open TV/screenshot by NPR

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Australian Open TV/Screenshot by NPR

Animation could become a more regular part of certain sporting events, depending on audience interest, technological capabilities and licensing availability.

Lehanski says the NHL has received “overwhelmingly positive” feedback from the public and is currently testing in hopes of offering animated broadcasts on a more regular basis.

“We're just scratching the surface with this,” he said. “I mean, there's so much more to come.”

That could include animated versions of social media highlights and shortened games broadcast on weekends, he says, “kind of a new version of Saturday morning cartoons for kids.” The technology could be used to turn players into avatars of themselves or entirely different animated characters, insert “crazy landscapes” behind them or “make the hockey puck look like a cookie.”

“Even in the longer term, I think you get the opportunity for fans to create their own experience,” Lehanski added. “But until then, we rely on world-class producers to create experiences tailored to audiences.”

He says the technology involved in the animation, which includes light emitters in the puck and the back of players' jerseys, has improved since the NHL started using it, showing players' movements and passes even more accurately.

It is these technological developments that offer even more possibilities. Perhaps one day tennis avatars will have fingers with which to hold their rackets, as Reid hinted.

Reid told the AP that he doesn't think animation will become the main way to watch sports, at least not in his lifetime.

“But who knows?” he said. “The world of sports and entertainment moves so, so fast.”