MELBOURNE, Australia — At one point, they were playing tennis. Next, you disappear off the court, dissolve into a puddle, or do a somersault at the halfway point. Their rackets swing independently from their hands and sometimes disappear completely. Their heads are too big. They are the best tennis players in the world. They are the clear stars of the 2025 Australian Open.
They are also cartoons.
Daniil Medvedev, last year’s finalist, puts his racket into the net.
This year’s semi-finalist Madison Keys ran the ball down, somersaulted into the air and disappeared, causing Elena-Gabriela Ruse to miss her volley.
And there is Jack Draper, who melted into the court as he felt the effects of five consecutive three-set matches.
This clip is courtesy of AO Animated, a YouTube live stream produced by the Australian Open that broadcasts matches taking place on Melbourne Park’s three show courts (Rod Laver Arena, Margaret Court Arena and John Cain Arena) in a video game style. . It uses tracking data from the Hawk-Eye system used for electronic line calling (ELC) to map player movements and ball trajectories, then overlays skins for facial features, kit, racket, etc. to transform that data into a cartoon player.
This means that, for all its fun glitches, the feed faithfully reproduces live tennis with only a short delay. There’s actual commentary, crowd noise, referee calls, and characters with heads that look almost identical to the players they represent. Reminiscing about old computer games, the protagonist sometimes has a mind of his own.
The tournament tested a primitive version in 2023 that only tracks the ball back and forth without players. In 2024, there was only one court animated, but this year there are three, and the viral moment has captured the tennis world’s imagination. Viewership increased from 246,542 during the first six days of last year’s event to 1,796,338 during the same period this year.
The cartoon players, with their shaky limbs, tendency to lose their rackets and sometimes change positions on the court, have been well-received by real-life players.
“It’s fun,” Carlos Alcaraz said at a press conference on Wednesday. World No. 30 Leylah Fernandez was scouting opponents on YouTube when she clicked on one of the streams she thought might be useful, and then received a pleasant but strange surprise.
Then Russian World No. 10 Daria Kasatkina, who vlogs on YouTube, got to the point about why this seemingly quirky fun bodes well for the future of tennis media and the growth of the sport. There are no subscription fees to pay, no tickets or travel deals to buy, and no need to search through countless television rights and suppliers to find out which broadcaster is hosting the tournament in the place your budding tennis fan can call home.
“It’s free,” Kasatkina said at a press conference.
The economics of Grand Slam media rights – deciding which channels will show the world’s four biggest tennis matches – are relatively simple. The Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open sell media rights to broadcasters. It is a TV network that has historically built its portfolio on the strengths of cable television. Some of them (including ESPN, Warner Bros Discovery and, most recently, Tennis Channel) also stream directly to consumers.
ESPN will pay $2.04 billion (more than £1.5 billion) to broadcast the US Open by 2037, according to SP Global, while Wimbledon broadcast deals with ABC and ESPN networks are worth $52.5 million a year. Warner Bros Discovery has signed a 10-year deal worth $650 million to broadcast the French Open in the United States starting in 2025.
Grand Slam tournaments must also protect the value of the in-person experience. When fans can attend major games from anywhere with relative ease, having physical tickets becomes less valuable. As a result, these broadcast contracts impose aggressive restrictions on sharing, editing and uploading clips on sites such as YouTube, TikTok, X and Instagram, which are where most people have the most access to tennis.
These restrictions also apply to the Grand Slams themselves, giving up some control over how they promote themselves on social media. Because AO Animated is created from ELC tracking data rather than broadcast feeds from television cameras, it can be streamed live alongside the actual match, allowing you to produce free tennis broadcasts two minutes behind the actual match. Rather than potentially taking attention away from the live footage at AO Animated, Eurosport and beIN Sports are hosting it on their online platforms.
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“We knew we had an asset called ELC and we went with that,” said Machar Reid, Tennis Australia’s director of innovation, in an interview at Melbourne Park this week.
“We’re using it on skeleton data where the skeleton has 29 points. 12 cameras are tracking 50 times per second. This allows you to create a 3D mesh and then place a skin on top. The number of avatars you can have is almost infinite.
“It’s important to build a community so people can talk about what’s happening and connect differently with sport.”
Community chat is an essential part of YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and other streaming platforms. Tennis took a long time to gain institutional acceptance. The NBA, NFL, and NHL have used gamified versions of sports broadcasts. In December, Disney+ aired the NFL game between the Dallas Cowboys and Cincinnati Bengals as The Simpsons on Monday Night Football. This complements Formula One drivers streaming on Twitch, world-famous soccer players who love esports, and athletes using TikTok.
Together, these platforms and free pathways to tennis expand the ways fans can discover the sport. They can range from fans of TikToker Coco Gauff to tennis player Coco Gauff to the sport of tennis. Or maybe you’re watching a hilarious cartoon version of an elite athlete melting to the floor and wondering what the heck is going on.
These characters were drawn by Mark Riedy of Tennis Australia, who works on game content for the Australian Open.
Riedy works in a bunker surrounded by computer screens and feeds of every match converted into animation. Riedy designed the graphics, players and stadiums. He regularly participates in YouTube chats to engage and answer questions from viewers. He likes to keep things light-hearted while embracing the flaws that capture the imagination.
Mark Riedy in the Animation Room at Melbourne Park. (Tennis Australia)
Sitting in the bunker during Emma Raducanu’s third round match against Iga Swiatek, he says: athletic He says the idea first came to him because he thought a gamified version of tennis would attract fans without a viable path to broadcast video. The tournament reserves the right to pre- and post-match action, so once the warm-up is over and players go to the service line to start the match, the footage melts into a cartoon world. It’s like the Wizard of Oz inverted, with mid-movie switching from black and white to glorious technicolor.
This also means there is no way to check that everything works up to the first point, which introduces another risk. This includes a protagonist with a big head, a huge tennis ball, and a wayward racket.
But part of AO Animated’s success is that its creators aren’t too precious about it. They want more than anything to be as fun and attractive as the players themselves. Not realistic because of their big heads.
“It’s definitely intentional,” says Xavier Muhlebach, the tournament’s head of original content.
“We wanted something cute and kid-friendly, but not just for kids. I can sit back and enjoy and laugh and watch it and not feel tied down to watching Blue’s Clues or something.”
Riedy adds: “It’s fun to have a little bit of a cartoon feel to it. If you want accuracy, here’s the actual version.
“There may be scenarios where we have a decent model for every single player, but for now it’s like a character editor in a video game. You can change any shape, including the head and eyes, just by opening a pop-up. The idea was to create a character that could be edited and changed, but right now there are too many different hairpieces, hats, etc.”
The next day, he sends Alcaraz an AO animated version of the distressed reporter.
There’s another issue that makes the stream seem surreal. The ELC camera is primarily behind the player, so if the player bends over, the racket may disappear, which is difficult to track due to the speed of movement. There is no finger animation (a wishlist for Riedy for next year) and the camera stops tracking the player about 20 feet behind the baseline or if the player bends over. This explains Draper’s apparent meltdown in the court against Alcaraz.
Riedy leads the way in the comments, mocking any misfortune. “That’s a big plus. “I don’t know if I would get the same response if I just posted this without chat,” he says.
“It’s different and it’s going to be very passive, whereas this is community-driven and we’re really talking about technology as well as tennis,” Muhlebach added.
The race to future-proof tennis as cable TV revenues continue to decline is eventually starting to impact broadcast rights values, creating a media arms race of sorts among the major players. Last year’s French Open introduced referee headcams, which were intended to check line calls but instead became famous for making players look like whiny children.
Tennis Australia has established its first venture capital fund, the $30 million (£15.2 million, $18.6 million) AO Ventures. The fund says it will “provide early support to high-growth, technology-led startups that are innovating in the world of sports.” , Entertainment, Media and Health.”
Taking AO Animated further is another goal of adding “emotion tracking” to allow players to celebrate and despair. Not only are there plans to animate the entire complex, but there are also plans to add a narrator that will incorporate color into the features of the animation itself rather than the actual tennis animation.
The most important people in this plan are the tournament and the fans, and as with the sport of tennis, it is the players who create value and attract spectators. Animated tennis is only as good as the tennis being played. World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka shared a video on Instagram, jokingly unimpressed by her character.
“We’re asking for feedback with them,” Muhlebach said. “Others may be a bit more aloof because they’ve been developing their own video games.” Sponsorship changes can also have implications down the road, as it is not uncommon for players to frequently sign new contracts or change racket or apparel sponsors.
It’s unlikely that every major, let alone every tournament, will be filled with animated versions of Alcaraz and Swiatek, scurrying around the court between points and occasionally falling backwards into the stands. Still, AO Animated is one of the clearest signs yet that tennis understands how sports media is changing and being left behind could soon be a death sentence.
One day, these animated tennis bobbleheads may rule the world. Until then, there was always Daniil Medvedev and his disappearing racket.
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb athletic)
