The innovative app that captures, analyzes and shortens the big moments in the game for you. (PLAIVIEW)
Last week, Forbes magazine reported that the total revenue of the top 10 earners in various sports in 2022 reached $1.1 billion, an all-time high. While lawyers, marketers, artists and a long list of other professions are in danger of becoming redundant, athletes are hanging out on a safe haven, but perhaps not for much longer.
The 10 Highest Paid Athletes in the World
It is not surprising that at the top of the list are three footballers: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé. Basketball also sends 3 representatives: LeBron James (No. 4), Stephen Curry (No. 8) and Kevin Durant (No. 10). Rounding out the list are boxer Cancelo Alvarez (No. 5), golfers Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson (No. 6 and No. 7, respectively), and tennis player Roger Prader (No. 9).
Artificial intelligence threatens jobs
It is too short to contain all the professions that are going to lose jobs and give way to productive AI tools: programmers, lawyers, copywriters, screenwriters, artists and journalists are just some of the professions that are going to experience upheaval. It's not about a future impact, it's being felt right now. For example, IBM announced that it would halt recruitment for about 7,800 positions, which will be replaced by AI technologies.
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Is the sports world also in danger?
Speaking of IBM, this isn't the first time it has shown us that a computer can replace a human. The company's chess computer, Deep Blue, stunned the world when it beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
Can what happened in chess also happen in sports? Nike was ahead of its time with this question. A viral advertisement released by the brand in 2014 shows us a future in which robots replace football players. Football stars such as Ronaldo, Neymar and Zlatan find themselves idle as robots rake in the glory. To change that, Ronaldo (the Brazilian) decides to do something: he gathers the stars and builds a team that will compete with robots, if they lose, they will stop playing for good, but if they win, football will go back to being human. The advertisement, of course, ends with the victory of the human stars over the robots.
But the truth is, such a danger does not really exist. The reason for this is simple, even if robots play football better than humans, we will probably just continue to watch humans play. After all, even today, after the glorious victory of the computer, there are still chess tournaments. What about robots versus robots? In this context, it should be mentioned Ephraim Kishon, in one of his stories the hero who hears that there is a computer that can play chess, buys two of them so that the computers will play against each other and he can read the newspaper quietly.
So how can AI threaten sports anyway?
It is important to understand that sports have long been more than just sports. Financially it is part of the entertainment industry and the big money is, of course, around broadcasting rights, merchandise and sponsorships, similar to the worlds of television and film. Economically, soccer teams compete in sports like streaming and gaming as much as they compete with each other.
If audiences who consume sports as entertainment decide they want to watch a series on Netflix instead of watching a game, or prefer to invest in Fortnite merchandise instead of Manchester United, then the sports industry suffers financially. That doesn't mean Messi and Ronaldo should start worrying, but beyond the stars themselves, and in general apart from the athletes, this industry is a mass livelihood, and if its revenues drop, their revenues will also drop accordingly.
How does this relate to AI?
If there's anything we can say for sure about the new tools we've recently been exposed to, it's that they have the ability to produce content non-stop. And if creating content and games becomes cheaper, because a machine writes the script, designs the characters, or programs the game, that means a lot more content, games, and other points of interest that the sports industry will have to compete with for audience attention and money.
Who hasn't dreamed of showing their friends the goal they scored just a moment ago in the neighborhood or showing off the hairdresser who won the school tournament? The children of the "Hehalutz – Education through Sport" youth tournament, held yesterday at the Wolfson complex in Tel Aviv, were exposed to the first application of its kind in the world that knows how to take soccer games - at any age and place and for any purpose - and analyze them using artificial intelligence and deep computer vision in order to produce summaries of the important events in the game.
"We wanted to make the technological capabilities that exist for professional footballers accessible to anyone who loves to play. Whether it's in a park, a lot, a neighborhood or a yard," explains PLAIVIEW CEO Or Pines. "All you need is to download the app, register, film the game and the system creates the automatic summary, which can be sent to friends and shared on social media. It addicts people to see the expats and share with all their family and friends. At the end of the day, when you kick a number to connections, you want the world to see it."
Omer Livnat, founder of Hehalutz – Education Through Sport: "We are proud and excited for another tournament that brings together a number of schools and brings together children from different cities, with the goal, as usual, to combine football and education. THE BIG INNOVATION IS THAT THIS TIME ALL THE CHILDREN, THROUGH THE COOPERATION WITH PLAIVIEW, WILL BE ABLE TO RECEIVE THEIR EVERY KICK AND GOAL DURING THE EVENT. We are sure that each and every child will come out of this day happy and especially a better person."
What about professional sports?
When it comes to Olympic athletes and top footballers, the level of investment in analysis is one that does not shame even the world's largest high-tech companies. Analysts, doctors and nutritionists perform data analyses and statistics to improve athletes' performance. They are joined by equipment manufacturers who are working on perfecting shoes, rackets and all the equipment that accompanies the various sports. The integration of AI in this field can have an impact in two ways.
The first is massive cuts in manpower. When analysts and scouts will give way to tools like AI scout. The second is the exacerbation of the phenomenon of "athletic doping." At the last Olympics in Tokyo, 3 world records and 12 Olympic records were broken. Some commentators attributed the athletes' tremendous success to the advantage provided by new technologies such as state-of-the-art running shoes and an improved running track. The phenomenon has been dubbed "sports doping." Now that the AI revolution is still in its infancy, we can only wonder if and when we'll see AI shoes that increase kick and pass accuracy, or an AI racquet that allows the golfer to hit the ball right into the hole.
Another question we don't know how to answer yet is how will we feel about it? Would we love to now be able to watch the improved performance of our favorite stars, or would it compromise the authenticity and charm of the sport and feel like cheating?
The writer is Ofer Nidam, entrepreneur, aerodynamics engineer, founder and CEO of Dasmit
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Tags
- artificial intelligence
- Ronaldo
- Nike
- Athletes
- sport
- football