Imagine watching a soccer match on your couch, but instead of being locked to a single camera angle, you could choose to see the action from behind the player as he strikes the ball, or from the goalie’s perspective as he calculates where to dive. Or rather than waiting for a replay after a questionable call, you could pause the action and circle around the players at the moment of the possible foul. 

This is the future of sports broadcasting, made possible only by volumetric video. At Arcturus, we’ve developed a proof-of-concept for this very thing, and it won’t be long until we see major stadiums scaling up the infrastructure to make it happen. Our CEO Kamal Mistry spoke with SportTechie about how and why this immersive viewing experience will become our new standard.

The Future of Live-Streamed Sports, if Up to Volumetric Video Platform Arcturus, Will Transform a Viewer Into a Producer

Volumetric video provides some of sports’ most compelling, and most futuristic, replays. Whether it’s Intel’s TrueView powering 360-degree reviews of key moments from the NFL and English Premier League or Canon’s foray into the “Netaverse” with Brooklyn’s NBA team, the immersive video enables the camera to spin around to any angle—even first-person from a player’s vantage point, offering glimpses of an otherwise hidden passing lane. 

What will soon become available is for fans to consume this experience live and control the viewpoint, rather than accept what a producer chooses to show. 

Helping to make this a reality is volumetric video platform Arcturus, a company founded by executives with prior experience at Netflix, Google, Pixar, Dreamworks, YouTube and Uber, among others. Conceived in 2016 with a first product release in early 2021, Arcturus has developed its Holosuite of tools for the editing, compressing and streaming of volumetric video. 

Read more in SportTechie.