JUNE | FEATURE
Making a
comeback
Broadcasters face an unprecedented
challenge covering sport in 2020.
Fanview MD Jim Irving says they could
learn from the world of e-sports
The world of sport came to a
grinding halt in March, as
Covid-19 lockdowns were
put in place around the world.
Two months later, it is tentatively
returning.
Germany’s Bundesliga has
reopened behind closed doors, with
one team installing cardboard
cut-outs of fans in its stadium (see
overleaf). The International Cricket
Council (ICC) laid out plans for its
return, including banning the use
of saliva to ‘shine’ cricket balls. And
the UK government has produced
guidelines for how athletes can
return to training, although they
won’t be heading to the Tokyo
Olympics until 2021.
But if spectator sports do return
any time soon, they will look very
different. Stadiums without fans
provide a unique challenge to
broadcasters and players alike:
how do you operate without the
atmosphere of fans in the crowd?
Sports media agency Fanview
has experience solving this kind
of unusual problem. The company
provides creative technology to
sports and e-sports organisations,
and has worked with UEFA on the
Champions League Final, as well
as with NBC on the Superbowl. Its
digital credentials include providing
production to the Fortnite Pro-AM,
a widely-publicised crossover event
that saw celebrities competing with
e-sports athletes.
Managing Director Jim Irving says
the company can provide virtual fans
that are a little bit more high-tech
than cardboard cut-outs: “3D avatars
are nothing new – the film industry
has been doing it for many years
– but we’ve been trying to make it
scalable for live TV.
“What we’re able to do is take a
simple selfie image, and we have
a platform that allows us to read
individual pixels in that frame
and estimate the dimensions of
someone’s face.” These faces can then
be used to populate a virtual crowd,
says Irving: “The cardboard cut-outs
are a nice idea, but we’re trying to
do the 2020 version of that. If you
can do that digitally, you can scale it
massively.”
Other kinds of tech Fanview
offers include live data-tracking
which broadcasters can use to
help describe games – particularly
useful for e-sports, which are often
less intuitive to new viewers. The
company also recently collaborated
with Red Bull, which Irving praises
as having innovation in its veins
(alongside caffeine, I would add). “We
scanned dancers and then took their
motion from video sources. Then we
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