Infantino wants to \u201cbreak\u201d America, where soccer has never reached the same levels of mainstream popularity as it has in the rest of the world. The last time the World Cup was held there was 1994. Singer Diana Ross missed a penalty<\/a> in the opening ceremony and Italian player Roberto Baggio<\/a> missed one in the final. England missed out altogether. Memorable, but it didn\u2019t capture American hearts.<\/p>\n This summer 5 million paying customers<\/a> will buy eye-wateringly expensive tickets to watch games play out in stadia across three different host countries \u2013 Canada, the US and Mexico. And it\u2019s predicted up to 6 billion<\/a> will engage with the competition around the world; on screens, phones, tablets, in bars, bookmakers and fan zones.<\/p>\n Sport exists in the same ultra-competitive attention economy as other forms of entertainment. If Fifa want to get inside the minds and mobile phones of audiences, then they\u2019ll need to think visually in a broadcast sense, but also vertically, in terms of creating content which will cut through online.<\/p>\n At the recent Winter Olympics held in Milano-Cortina, Italy, the drone cameras<\/a> caught eyes and stole the show. Drones worked well buzzing after skiers down a fixed-track mountain course or chasing skaters around an ice rink but they won\u2019t work in football stadiums where the unpredictability of the action means a drone could get hit by the ball. <\/p>\n However, this World Cup will have cable-suspended, gyro-stabilised spider cameras swooping above the action. Expect to see them used more on the live action than in previous World Cups, perhaps even during penalty shootouts. <\/p>\n At every game there will be 45-50 cameras focused on the action including pole cams, cable cams, 360 cams and one new camera taking you closer to the action than ever before. \u201cReferee view\u201d<\/a> will allow audiences to see what the referee sees. Cameras mounted on the referee, trialled at the Fifa Club World Cup last year, will show us what the ref can \u2013 and can\u2019t \u2013 see. These points of view are not new to sports broadcasting (they are common in rugby) but the issue in the past has been the stability of the vision. For this competition, broadcasters will use AI stabilisation software<\/a> to improve the smoothness of the shots. <\/p>\n AI-enabled 3D avatars will also assist VAR decisions by ensuring precision around player ID and tracking. This will drive semi-automated offside technology, so you\u2019ll get greater quality images and faster, fairer decisions. <\/p>\n At the 2022 World Cup in Doha, Qatar, there was access all areas for a Netflix documentary called Captains, broadcast after the tournament. Ever since the Formula 1 Drive to Survive<\/a> fly-on-the-wall format took us inside F1\u2019s previously sacred inner sanctums, fans want to see everything on and off the pitch. But this year if you want to go behind the scenes, you\u2019ll have to go online.<\/p>\n In a landmark partnership, Fifa have hooked up with TikTok and YouTube<\/a> \u2013 two of the planet\u2019s most popular content destinations<\/a>. They\u2019ll become Fifa\u2019s first ever \u201cpreferred platforms\u201d, a go-to place for fans and creators. <\/p>\nThe AI World Cup<\/h2>\n
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