Game-Changing Innovation in Sports

Cutting-edge technologies and data analytics have been transforming how athletes perform for years. These sporting innovations are now being built upon to expand further than performance to revolutionize the fan experience too, while enabling sports businesses to open up new revenue streams and become more profitable.

At NTT DATA, we are passionate about using data to share new stories in different ways and enhance the fan experience. And throughout the last decade, we have used technology to help provide better outcomes for both the businesses we partner with and the fans.

We have been partnering with, sponsoring and providing technological solutions for major sporting events around the world – including the Tour de France, the Indycar Series, The Open, Major League Baseball, and the BMW International Open – for many years. Whether through digital tracking and biometric identities for stadium entry, or personalized data feeds for fans to keep up with the latest action, we have developed a number of different digital solutions to ensure fans can enjoy their favorite sports live.

Move closer: evolving the fan experience with Kirari!

Sport has evolved dramatically in the past 30 years. Athletes have become faster and stronger, more skilful and more precise, all thanks to professionalism, improved dieting and enhanced training. This has elevated sport from just being a spectacle to entertain audiences and has transformed it into a lucrative business for the most successful sports organizations.

Athletes have become faster and stronger, more skilful and more precise, elevating sport from a spectacle to entertain audiences to a lucrative business. However, while technology has accelerated the evolution of professional and competitive sports, the fan experience has lingered behind.

However, while technology has accelerated the evolution of professional and competitive sports, the fan experience has lingered behind and been a lot slower to adapt. It is only in recent years that data has started to become more available to fans and people are able to stay up to date with the latest events in a match or tournament. While being able to receive the latest highlights as they happen through mobile alerts and applications has helped fans feel closer to the action, there’s still a long way to go. 

Sports have a dynamism and excitement that cannot be fully captured in images or videos as there are sensations that can only be experienced in the stadium itself. To date, it has been difficult to replicate that experience of being in a packed sporting venue with other fans, cheering on your team or your favorite athlete.

NTT DATA partners with some of the biggest sporting organizations to help improve how they engage with fans, continuously working to develop new solutions to transform the way people enjoy sport. 

By employing the latest in technology and innovation, the NTT Group has now taken the fan experience to a whole new level with the creation of Kirari! – a collection of technologies that collect and process information, transmitting it in real time, before reproducing the information for a remote audience.

Kirari! is an ultra-realistic technology for recreating the entirety of sporting arenas in real time. The technology enables the transmission and reproduction of live sport to realistically recreate the performances of athletes in far-away sporting arenas, as well as replicating the spaces and environments in which the athletes find themselves, in alternative venues. 

Figure: An 8K camera installed at the Musashino Forest Sport Plaza, the venue for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games badminton competitions. 

Figure: The broadcast center, where video images from the badminton matches were transmitted via a 1-Gbit/s network. 

Figure: The remote-viewing venue, where a 100-seater spectator stand and a full-size court equipped with holographic projection equipment was set up, and how it was constructed. 

For example, a table tennis tournament happening live in the city could be captured and broadcast anywhere in the world via low latency data transmission, whether that be in a remote location or a venue overseas. The same would apply for any indoor event such as ballet, badminton (see figures), karate and more. This allows audiences across the world to enjoy matches and competitions, played in arenas and stadiums far away, through holographic projection and high-quality replication of the stadium sound.

Imagine being able to watch the World Cup final live by heading to a local venue and feeling as if you were witnessing the drama unfold in the stadium itself. This is the future of fan experiences – being immersed in the sporting experience, as if you were watching the action live and in person.

How Kirari! is changing the game

There are four key benefits to the Kirari! technologies that NTT DATA and NTT have developed. These are:

• Separating player images and sound from a live sporting event in real time. Video capture technology is enabling images to be captured of moving athletes in real time without the need for a green screen or plain background. The data captured can then be reproduced and projected into a new venue as a hologram.
• Generating 180-degree video imagery in real time by combining 4K, or better, high-resolution video segments vertically and horizontally across a large screen. Super high-definition video stitching technology produces high-resolution, ultra-wide videos by dividing up and shooting the whole stadium or sporting arena with multiple 4K cameras. The video segments are then pulled together to create 180-degree panoramic displays.
• Advanced media streaming and synchronization to transmit spatial and environmental information. This technology transmits 3D information, such as the subject of the camera’s size, its position within the venue, and direction of any sound produced. By combining this with environmental information, such as lighting, Kirari! can represent and project the subject accurately in a secondary environment, improving the realism of the viewing experience.
• Powerful audio production that replicates the sound of a sporting event. Advanced sound-reproducing technology can reproduce the cheers of spectators in a stadium, even if they are not visible as part of the display. This enables fans to feel as if they are witnessing the action unfold live in front of them.

Ultra reality is shaping the future

While the ideas behind Kirari! and its holographic visual implementation sound futuristic, NTT DATA has been working with a number of organizations to bring these innovative fan experiences to life around the world, since the inception of Kirari!

The ultra-realistic viewing technology has been implemented with Major League Baseball (MLB), which signed a deal with NTT in 2019 to bring Ultra Reality Viewing (URV) to MLB games. This uses multiple 4K cameras positioned around baseball stadiums to create a 180-degree viewing experience, with Kirari! technology stitching together multiple video and audio inputs. 

Ultra Reality Viewing, or URV, uses multiple 4K cameras to create a 180-degree viewing experience, with Kirari! technology stitching together multiple video and audio inputs. URV is scalable and adaptable to other sports and other genres of entertainment – and has been used to capture live music events, projecting them across the world.

The data captured is then transmitted with nanosecond latency to create an immersive broadcast of 12K quality and which is intended for public viewing, such as at stadiums, movie theaters or other large venues. The URV technology is scalable and adaptable to other sports, and other genres of entertainment, and has been used to capture concerts and music events, projecting them across the world too.

Another example of URV technology enhancing the fan experience was during the sailing events at a recent global sporting event, demonstrating the capabilities of Kirari! on the biggest sporting stage in the world. Similar to baseball, the technology combined 4K video footage from multiple cameras to create an ultra-wide 12K resolution display and enable sailing spectators to enjoy a new innovative way to watch the action unfold. For a sport that is often viewed from a long distance with binoculars, this allowed fans to enjoy the competition up close, as if they were sat on a boat alongside the racecourse.

URV technology is not the only benefit of Kirari! so its applications extend much further than just baseball and sailing. Trials have also been successful for badminton matches in global competitions. Action on the court was captured in the competition venue and reproduced in real-time as holograms in an alternative venue on the other side of the host city. The projection venue was set up with spectator seating and a life-size court, with players moving fluidly across the court as the matches unfolded in real-time. This enabled the audience to enjoy every element of the match, from the high-paced action between players to the squeaking of trainers on the court, as well as the atmosphere and noises of being in the crowd, as if they were at the competition venue itself.

Fan experiences extend even further than just being completely immersed in the sport you are watching. Kirari! was implemented at one global event to enable a fan experience, whereby people could be part of a torch relay and interact with a holographic representation of the official ambassador for the competition. It is another example of how Kirari! can transform the fan experience, and the opportunities for the technology are limitless.

Kirari! is already transforming the future of sporting experiences and turning them into a reality – it is putting fans at the heart of all the action and revolutionizing the way people interact and engage with the sports they love.

Originally published by NTT DATA, September 2021.

Discover more about Kirari!

• The Future of Spectatorship: Beyond Reality with NTT’s New Viewing Experience

• Ultra-Realistic Communication Technology