How the Australian Open thwarts the broadcasting rights of its matches using Miis

The result is very approximate but it has the merit of greatly amusing Internet users. Since this Monday, the Australian Open has been broadcasting its tennis matches for free and live on its YouTube channel, but these are a little different from the usual… If the tournament can indeed afford this retransmission, while respecting television rights, it’s because they are not “real meetings” with “real players”. The athletes are modeled by virtual characters, which are reminiscent of the Wii Miis.

Famous athletes are difficult to recognize. Novak Djokovic was thus deprived of hair on the lower part of his skull throughout his match against the American Nishesh Basavareddy. The yellow ball is slightly oversized compared to the players and sometimes takes strange trajectories. Despite everything, these anomalies give rise to sequences that are amusing to say the least… When Daniil Medvedev, angry, smashes his racket, the scene would almost become comical. Luckily, for those who really want to follow the tournament, these matches are commented on.

Athletes transformed into Simpson

If the Australian Open does not have the rights to broadcast its own matches (which could be a shame), it is because the tournament sells the exclusivity of its matches very dearly to television operators. all over the world. To thwart this regulation, the Grand Slam tournament therefore had to show ingenuity. The tennis tournament is not, however, the first to use this technology; the NBA and the NFL have already experimented with it in the United States during basketball and American football matches. Last month, the Cincinnati Bengals and Dallas Cowboys teams became Simpsons for a game. For Christmas, players from the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs were transformed into animated Disney characters.