Tooning in: Avatars are replacing sportstars on tennis courts, football pitches
At basketball games and Grand Slams, players are getting animated makeovers. Parallel live feeds are wooing a younger, multi-tasking audience. See how it works.
What happens when fun and games aren’t enough?
Tennis and even football are proving too long-drawn-out for a generation raised on 30-second Reels, and so a strange crossover is playing out in the world of sport.
Animated figures ranging from Daisy Duck and Bart Simpson to SpongeBob SquarePants and his friend Patrick Star are taking the place of players during live matches.
Meanwhile, at the Australian Open, bobbleheads stepped in for the likes of American tennis star Madison Keys and Russia’s Daniil Medvedev.
On the sidelines of some of these games, Toy Story characters cheer, and Marge Simpson chats about gingerbread cookies.
Sporting institutions around the world — from America’s NFL (National Football League) and NBA (National Basketball Association) to the tennis Grand Slams — are creating these parallel live feeds, with an eye on a younger, multi-tasking audience.
The goal, says Machar Reid, director of innovation at Tennis Australia, is to offer new generations a non-traditional way of watching sports.
“Our focus is on engaging younger viewers, who may not yet be inclined to watch full games in the traditional format,” says Phil Orlins, vice-president for production technology and innovation at ESPN.
The generations Reid and Orlins are referring to include Gen Alpha, Gen Z and younger millennials — essentially, viewers under 34.
“These generations are interested in consuming tennis in different ways, often designed for the phone, that are creative and engaging. The live chat function fosters a community element too, which really brings people together,” Reid says.
It helps, then, that many of the animated broadcasts can be streamed free online, eliminating the need for the viewer to commit to a specific network subscription, and a stationary larger screen.
For those wondering if any of this is really necessary, the data would suggest it is.
Analysis of NFL viewership in the US in 2024, by S&P Global’s Kagan research group, showed that nearly half (47%) of all viewers were over 54, while only 17% were aged 18 to 35.
Lowering the average of viewers is a key part of their animated effort, David Lehanski, executive vice-president of business development and innovation at NHL, indicated in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR).
Skin in the game
How does the livestream itself work? How does an NFL player become Bart Simpson or an avatar mirror Medvedev’s moves?
The key lies in high-quality data-tracking technology that captures, in real time, where athletes are on the field and how their bodies and limbs are moving.
At the Australian Open, for instance, the electronic-line calling system tracks not only the ball but also 29 points on a player’s body. These data points are used to create a 3D sketch of each player and animated game-play. “The data, collected 100 times a second by 12 cameras, is ingested by our gaming engine, which creates the avatars of the players as well as the stadium experience,” says Reid of Tennis Australia.
This happens in seconds, allowing animated play to unfold with no more than a two-minute lag.
A key challenge is ensuring the data performs flawlessly in real time, admits Orlins of ESPN. “Any gaps in the tracking data can create issues with the gameplay animation. And each sport presents unique challenges. Football, for instance, is particularly complex because players frequently collide with and obstruct each other, which can cause gaps in the optical tracking data. To compensate, companies like Beyond Sports (an AI-based visualisation engine) blend optical tracking with single-point tracking data, writing specialised programmes to merge the two.”
Layering this data with animated characters presents another level of complexity. In some cases, “their proportions don’t match the real players they’re replacing, and additional programming is required to scale and animate them naturally while maintaining a smooth viewing experience,” Orlins says.
Smells like team spirit
Bit by bit, nonetheless, leagues and associations are committing to the effort.
In January, the Australian Open became the first tennis Grand Slam to produce an animated livestream of all its matches, on its YouTube channel.
Players walked onto courts in human form, then morphed into Nintendo Wii-style avatars.
This is their third year of experiments with animation. “In the first year, 2023, we animated the ball. Then, we tried animation on just one court. In 2025, we’ve scaled it to three courts. We’ve had plenty of opportunities to learn, and had so much fun, along the way,” Reid says.
In February 2024, NFL worked with the TV networks CBS Sports and Nickelodeon to work SpongeBob SquarePants and his friend, Patrick Star, into the sidelines of a football match between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers.
NFL’s Toy Story Funday Football match in September 2023, and the Simpsons Funday Football Dallas Cowboys vs Cincinnati Bengals match last December, were fully animated telecasts of the games. These alt-casts were streamed on secondary platforms such as ESPN+, Disney+ and NFL+, while the actual game aired on the primary networks (ESPN, CBS and Amazon Prime).
At The Simpsons one, Homer and Bart played on opposing teams, with a bet thrown in too: If Bart’s Bengals won, he could claim all Homer’s desserts for a month; if they lost, he would have to take on Homer’s job for a period, and do “nuclear stuff like a loser”. (The Bengals won, so Homer is presumably crying big yellow tears somewhere, over his lost desserts.)
At Christmas, NBA produced a similar Disney-themed broadcast of the San Antonio Spurs vs New York Knicks game, titled Dunk the Halls, featuring Mickey Mouse and his posse.
“In coming Australian Open livestreams, we hope to weave in more animated fun,” Reid says. Think animated presenters, coaches and fans, and enhanced expressions for players.
“I don’t think these formats will replace traditional viewing,” Reid adds. “But they will open up the game to audiences that like to consume their content in more gamified ways.”
