Cameras on referees are becoming more common in sports, but it’s been difficult to broadcast those feeds live due to latency and “jitter.” Improved bandwidths are helping with the former, while artificial intelligence has improved the latter for this year’s FIFA World Cup broadcasts.
“Jitter” refers to the shakiness and often motion-sickness-inducing movements of a video feed attached to the temple of a referee running and looking all over the field to track the game. Understandably, no one wants to watch that. FIFA’s tech partner Lenovo has been working on this by using AI to smooth out the jitter, without going overboard, and the first livestream of a ref cam was used for the 2025 Club World Cup. Lenovo and FIFA say they’ve been able to reduce shakiness in live ref cam videos by 50 percent and “feel very comfortable going into the World Cup.”
