Australian Open goes Wii Sports mode for YouTube broadcast

2024 was a massive year for innovation in tennis (it is the sex, after all), and 2025 is proving no different. It’s unclear if they were inspired by the NFL’s Simpsons game or that one video of Wii tennis scored to the Challengers soundtrack, but either way, the Australian Open has come up with a bold new plan to expand its reach. Organizers weren’t allowed to show actual live matches for free around the world because exclusive broadcast rights had already been sold, but there was nothing stopping them from streaming almost live games on YouTube with one little caveat: the players and court look straight out of Wii tennis.

Medvedev smashing his racquet in the Australian Open Wii stream is peak comedy 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭pic.twitter.com/4EIrsC3lwL

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— The Tennis Letter (@TheTennisLetter) January 14, 2025

If you tune in, you won’t just be watching a random, computer-generated match. There are multiple cameras around the court capturing live stadium noise and detailed player movement. A project called AO Animation then feeds that data into a program that replicates it in avatar form with an approximately two-minute delay. All the commentary you’ll hear is the same as it would have been if the players were live. 

Of course, this is still a developing technology. “Limb tracking is complex, you’ve got 12 cameras trying to process the silhouette of the human in real time, and stitch that together across 29 points in the skeleton,” Machar Reid, director of innovation at Tennis Australia, told The Guardian. “It’s not as seamless as it could be—we don’t have fingers—but in time you can begin to imagine a world where that comes.”

Even in this world, the whole concept is a blast—fingers (and fully rendered clothes, unfortunately) be damned. You can see it for yourself on the Australian Open’s YouTube channel, with matches running through January 26.