The 2026 FIFA World Cup is being defined by more than the matches. During the tournament’s opening week, Japanese supporters stayed behind to clean the stands after their match against the Netherlands. Tens of thousands of Scottish supporters transformed parts of Boston and Providence into temporary extensions of the Tartan Army. Norwegian fans brought a coordinated “Viking Row” into stadiums, public spaces, and viral videos. A fan-led Qatari supporters’ group expanded its tr

Sports participation rarely begins with a registration form. For many young people, it begins with a moment of exposure: a game on television, a highlight on a phone, an athlete they admire, a replay that makes a difficult play easier to understand, or a national-team performance that makes a sport feel larger than it did before.

If volumetric video is going to become more than a series of impressive demos, the industry needs to focus on the ecosystem. That means standards, interoperability, honest technical discussion, shared terminology, real benchmarks, hardware and software alignment, audio, content protection, playback consistency, and support for the companies, creators, researchers, broadcasters, and hardware manufacturers solving different parts of the same problem.

Gaussian splats entered broad industry awareness in 2023. If companies filed patent applications around splat compression, streaming, mobile rendering, level-of-detail selection, spherical harmonic reduction, asset packaging, dynamic updates, or hybrid video-plus-splat delivery during that early commercial wave, some applications may already be public or may become public soon, depending on filing strategy and exceptions.

That may sound obvious, but it is one of the most important lessons the volumetric video industry has had to learn over the last decade. A new medium is not established by the capture stage alone. It is not established by the renderer alone. It is not established by the compression format, the playback device, or the demo.

The goal of this series is simple: share what we have learned from 10 years of inventing, testing, breaking, rebuilding, and validating volumetric systems so others can move faster, avoid repeated mistakes, and help build a stronger ecosystem.

We have not only tested volumetric systems. We have helped invent them. Over the past decade, our work has spanned original R&D, patent development, capture system design, reconstruction workflows, streaming architectures, standards, and use-case validation. We have tested, broken, rebuilt, and rethought volumetric systems across multiple generations of the technology.

Sports is one of the hardest environments in media. It is fast, crowded, time-sensitive, and built around moments that matter immediately. That changes the technical requirements in a fundamental way. For sports, the challenge is not just visual quality. The challenge is whether a system can scale across athletes, cameras, frames, devices, and networks while still operating in real time.

Sports fans have consistently proven to be catalysts for adopting new technology in the media and entertainment space. Historical evidence over the past 30–40 years shows that passionate fan demand has accelerated the uptake of various broadcast and consumer technologies. From the rise of cable TV to high-definition broadcasting and today’s streaming platforms, sports enthusiasts often lead the charge in embracing innovations to get closer to the game.

Season 1 of the Skyrim.AI Expert Series took a deep dive into the cutting-edge trends reshaping sports media and fan experiences. Across 14 episodes, industry professionals explored how emerging technologies, from Spatial Sports Media and XR to AI personalization and global streaming, are transforming the way sports are produced, delivered, and consumed.

Do you enjoy podcasts? Our expert series is now published as a podcast, so you can read or listen to Key Take ways from Season 1 (part 1)...

Globally, piracy is estimated to cost the sports industry as much as $28 billion in lost revenue each year. These staggering figures reflect a worldwide challenge: whenever fans feel priced out or shut out, many turn to unauthorized streams. Putting a fan first strategy in place can turn pirates into paying fans.

Sports content is evolving from a one-feed-for-all model to a one-feed-for-each model, and that doesn’t mean choosing one market over another; it means serving each and every market in parallel. Spatial media provides the technical foundation to do this efficiently, and global streamers provide the distribution.

Sports franchises and broadcasters have long admired the engagement levels seen in sports video games. Now, with spatial sports media, the line between game and reality is blurring, and advertising stands to become more personal and impactful in the process. Gamers have shown that dynamic, personalized ads can be accepted, even appreciated, when done thoughtfully and in context. Spatial Media will bring dynamic ads in vidoe games to live sport games.

In the battle for audience attention, the dynamics of sports and short-form digital content are not oppositional but increasingly synergistic. Destination viewing is far from dead, it’s evolving into new forms that blend the live, collective excitement of traditional broadcasts with the interactive, personalized engagement of the social media age. Sports, as a content genre, continues to dominate live viewership and capture cultural moments in a way few other things can. At t

In the last five years, a wave of up-and-coming sports leagues has surged in popularity, driven by fans’ appetite for fresh, immersive experiences. Unlike traditional leagues, these new sports ventures blend athletic competition with technology, interactivity, and unprecedented access to players. Fans still crave live sports, but they also love seeing athletes in new perspectives, for example, hearing competitors mic’d up or watching from unique angles[1][2]. This desire for

Imagine it’s Sunday afternoon and a family is gathered in the living room to watch a big game on their 75- inch smart TV. Suddenly, a spectacular play happens – say a wide receiver makes a leaping catch at the sideline. In a traditional broadcast, you’d have to wait for whatever replay the director chooses to show, from the angle the network cameras captured. But with spatial media enabled, the viewer at home can grab the TV remote and become the director for that moment.

Enter the Sports AI Agent, an AI-powered personal companion that enhances your game-day experience in real time. Think of it as your own digital co-pilot for sports, tuned to what you care about. For example, Skyrim.AI, a leader in immersive sports tech, describes its Sports AI Agent as a "virtual companion" that learns your preferences and tailors the broadcast accordingly

Imagine tuning into a football game and seeing Woody and Buzz Lightyear celebrating a touchdown, or flipping on a hockey match where Bugs Bunny is skating on the ice. It sounds like a kid’s cartoon special, yet it’s actually happening in live sports broadcasts.

Volumetric video is essentially the art of capturing 3D movement over time, think of it as filming a performance in a way that you can later walk around it. Instead of watching shadows on a wall, as in traditional flat video, we’re capturing the entire sculpture in motion, with depth and volume.