At each football World Cup, new technologies are used to try to make the show more dynamic and also make the referee’s work easier.
In this year’s edition, FIFA, in partnership with Lenovo, will implement new features that range from the creation of 3D avatars for all players to a system to minimize delays in broadcasting games over the internet.
One of the main innovations is the creation of 3D models of all 1,248 World Cup players.
The avatars will be used both to answer questions about offside calls and on the Fifa AI Pro platform, which will make data from all 48 teams available for technical committees to analyze their players and also the opposing teams.
With the avatars, it will be possible to integrate them into the semi-automated offside system, making it easier for judges to see them.
To create the three-dimensional model, each player is placed in a booth with several cameras that take hundreds of 360º images. The photos are rendered in a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) program and give rise to the avatar, which has physical characteristics identical to those of the player.
Thus, it is possible for the original moves to be represented by the avatars almost in real time, and with millimeter precision (including dimensions such as the size of the boots) within the game’s time constraints.
“We are working with FIFA to create the next generation of AI-enabled 3D avatars so that the world’s greatest players are represented as realistically and accurately as possible. No two football players are the same, with the same physique or size. Therefore, the exact dimensions of each player will be taken into account,” says Art Hu, Chief Technology Officer at Lenovo.
Another new feature in World Cups, which was tested during last year’s Club World Cup, is Referee View, the use of cameras by referees. As they will always be on, the devices will give fans the experience of watching the game from the referees’ point of view. And with more stable images, which is possible with the use of AI in milliseconds.
Videos can also be used to clarify doubts in cases of offside or controversial moves. As FIFA is responsible for generating the images, it is the entity that will define what will be made available for broadcasters to reproduce.
“We created a new AI that captures the image from the referee’s camera, stabilizes the image digitally and makes it available to FIFA. So, in milliseconds, the image that was captured from the referee’s camera is stabilized and available for broadcast, streaming, or to show in the stadium. So, a penalty happened and you want the image of the referee? This image will be in a much higher quality than it was in the Club World Cup and at a more palatable standard for the general public”, says Valério Mateus, general manager of Services and Solutions at Lenovo Latin America.
“The clearer, tighter images achieved by the new generation of Referee View can support referees at critical moments, whilst also giving fans a clearer, more immersive view of the game,” says FIFA Secretary General Mattias Grafström.
Speaking of broadcasting the matches, another difference will be noticed by fans who watch via digital internet channels. According to Mateus, a new technology used by Lenovo promises to greatly reduce the delay that existed compared to broadcasts by TV stations.
He explains that, in the system used so far, the video needs to be digitized and made available for streaming. And this digitization process is the critical stage of this path, which took a few seconds and caused a longer delay.
“What we are guaranteeing is, inside the stadium, between capturing the image and making it available for streaming, it takes less than five seconds. In some situations it can even be immediate. It is this digitization process that took much longer and gave the feeling of someone on your side shouting a goal before because they were watching it on broadcast and you were watching it on streaming.”
To put all these technologies into action, Lenovo deployed servers at the International Broadcast Center (IBC), in Dallas, Texas.
In this way, the company highlights, it is possible to “provide the computational capacity, devices and AI-based solutions necessary to bring every moment of every match to global audiences and support the broadest broadcast operation in the history of the World Cup.”
