Enhancing Fan Engagement in a 5G Stadium With AI-Based Technologies and Live Streaming

We participated in Taiwan's National Intercollegiate Athletic Games (NIAG) in early May 2021, and formed a Sport Technology Team of more than 30 scholars, students, and engineers to provide novel systems and solutions that make the athletic games rich in sport technologies. Some of the features could be the first time shown to the Internet audience for large-scale athletic games. The technologies involved include table tennis ball trajectory and bounce distribution, badminton shuttlecock tracking and trajectory, augmented-reality enriched video streaming on social networks, real-time three-dimensional broadcasting with free view-angle, in-stadium video stream pushing by a private fifth-generation (5G) network with multiaccess edge computing, AI-based sport data analytics during live streaming, etc. All the technologies and applications are integrated in a novel technology-enhanced broadcasting system (TEBS) that is dedicated to sport events. This article introduces the respective technologies that we have developed, deployed, and demonstrated in the 2021 NIAG. We stress the layered architecture design and integration of the TEBS, as well as experimental results from real games in the smart stadium and swimming pool. We also discuss the technical challenges and our approaches to tackle them, as well as lessons learned.