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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

I don’t really watch sports, but whenever I catch sight of a football game on TV, I’m amazed at how colorful and vibrant on field ads are, almost as if they were computer graphic generated or something.

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There are companies doing exactly that: augmented reality / computer vision advertising.

- https://www.uniqfeed.com/our-solutions/football/

- https://supponor.com/

They have on their websites some neat examples. For example Supponor literally replaces the ads in the live stream (see the hockey example on their front page).

Not sure if it's the same two companies, but you can find an impressive result video here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/uf0re1/d...

Would be nice if some (truly) free software was doing the opposite

I imagine it's just a matter of time. Sponsor block for removing sections of ads embedded in videos is already a thing. Making the blocking spatial instead of just temporal is not far removed.

In soccer they actual are. the ads are injected to the sideboards beside the playing field, so that if you watch the same game on different channels, they have different ads depending on their avg viewers.

seems like a fun adblock project

Where is this true? Certainly not in England, nor any UEFA games I watched last season. MLS?

It was pretty easy to spot if you watched Euro 2024 games.

Where though, on which broadcaster?

I watch a lot of football, I watched >90% of games at the Euros on UK TV, I've never seen a pitchside advert on TV that wasn't showing the same as what you would see if you were sat in the stadium.

Edit: it was only on US, Chinese and German TV - https://invidis.com/news/2024/07/virtual-ads-wysiwyg-on-tv-a...

Ah, I was watching between German channels, which explains it!

I don't watch football, but in hockey they project digital ads onto the ice and parts of the plexiglass around the rink during the broadcasts that aren't there IRL. They are often vibrant and look out of place, it's quite possible that's what you were seeing.

They are typically superimposed yes. It's extraordinarily easy with football, the field is essentially a premade green screen with completely standardized index points (the yard markers). What's funny is what happens when it starts snowing on the field, which is not rare with the NFL's schedule.

You should checkout F1. they now have e-ink on the side of the cars and the ads are dynamic and catch your eye. I would be curious to find out if it's some exotic type of e-ink tech they use to keep it lightweight (as in .. as light as a decal or paint)

Do you have a link ? I was not aware of that, the only thing I can find is that McLaren ran some tests to replace in-cockpit ads with a small eink screen, but nothing on the side of the cars.

What you found is what he's talking about. I find it annoying to watch IMHO due to the e-ink flicker.

https://www.reddit.com/r/F1Technical/comments/1dx509a/mclare...

also to clarify, I just called it "e-ink" because I didn't know what it was, it just looked like e-ink based on how it seems to change (flicker and then transition to new image). I have no idea what it is :D

https://seamlessdigital.com/mclaren/

They generally are so that they can be localized / pay whoever is showing you the stream.

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