According to recent numbers by Caretta Research, the value of the VFX and graphics software market stands at just over $1bn as of the end of 2025. Of this, 30% is driven by live graphics, 30% by virtual ad insertion and 5% by virtual sets. This market is expected to grow by another 40% over the next five years.
AR and VR graphics, alongside virtual studios, are powerful tools to help broadcasters address the challenges linked to live sports delivery. “Live sports is perhaps the most challenging vertical in live broadcast, the action often happens rapidly and is unpredictable,” says Carol Bettencourt, VP of marketing at Chyron. “Fans demand engagement, analysis and lots of data. Expenses and logistics scale up quickly when events take place in various locations.”
VFX is now a routine part of the storytelling and data visualisation workflow. Whether it is used functionally or more creatively, it adds a layer of prestige to a production and makes the viewer pay attention, according to Jon Hobbs, head of business growth at AE Live. “You want people to lean into a production and not be indifferent, which is in danger of happening in some sports,” he says. “You can add a virtual layer to a production to amp up excitement. Don’t forget, you are competing with other forms of entertainment.”
The real transformation is not only that productions can look more spectacular, but also that broadcasters can bring graphics, data, AR, LED, virtual environments and newsroom or sports workflows into the same operational logic, according to Alex Roriz, SVP of solution-market strategy and global partnerships at wTVision.
“We look at virtual sets, augmented reality, LED walls and data-driven graphics not as isolated technologies, but as part of a broader live production workflow,” he says. “You must use centralised data to stream your story and your graphics all the way, generating templates that can be re-used to produce more, faster. A unified workflow that serves all kinds of graphics, including AR and VR, allows that.
Sports have become more statistically literate, according to Phil Ventre, chief strategy officer at Pixotope. “A static lower-third stat bug doesn’t help anyone understand what happened, whereas AR lets the picture explain itself. It makes complex sports more legible to casual viewers and richer for diehard fans simultaneously, which is the holy grail for a rights holder trying to grow audience without alienating the base.”
This type of technology is addressing cost-per-show, studio scalability and remote-production economics, as well as offering increased sponsorship flexibility and on-air differentiation for the broadcaster. It also addresses comprehension, while tackling information density, second-screen fragmentation, and the stadium-versus-couch trade-off for the viewer, according to Ventre.
“The spectacle is real, but it’s a side effect of finally having a real-time, tracking-aware, data-integrated pipeline doing work that the industry has been trying to do for a while,” he says.
Talent gap
A big challenge in this field right now is finding the right talent. Creating virtual environments is a special skill, thankfully found more and more frequently as an entire generation of game developers using Unreal and other 3D design tools have come of age, according to Bettencourt. “Complexity does come into play in bringing these creative assets into a broadcast workflow, so it is important to work with skilled vendors, creative houses and operators. However, as broadcast workflows continue to evolve, often with efficiency in mind, complexity is countered with increased efficiencies.”
Trust is an ongoing issue when it comes to the use of virtual tools, especially in news or live sports, and the field of VFX is not spared. “A viewer will not question things that are obviously virtual, and designed to be seen as such,” adds Hobbs. “I think there’s a fine line when it comes to layering in ads that aren’t there, or virtually inserting a pretty real-life looking crowd into an empty stadium. Those elements need careful consideration from rights owners, or you could get to a point where a virtual recreation of a match actually plays out a different scenario or ending to the true version.”
In 2026, the line between graphics and virtual production is collapsing, and real-time, tracking-aware, engine-based pipelines are becoming the default toolkit for sports rights holders, according to Ventre. A few trends underpin this shift: real-time engines are now the norm rather than bespoke graphics systems; optical and inertial camera tracking is ubiquitous, so any camera on the truck can be an AR camera; and sports data feeds are tightly integrated, so AR objects are updated live.
“Cameras now are producing genuinely new visuals – replays from impossible angles, virtual flythroughs of plays – that you simply cannot do with traditional cameras,” adds Ventre. “These are still expensive per-venue installs, so they show up at marquee events more than weekly fixtures, but when they’re combined with engine-rendered AR overlays you get the most striking results on air right now.”
Mobile-first, immersive experiences including holographics are also nascent in this space, allowing fans to interact with AR content through smartphone or glasses-based devices such as Apple Vision Pro. “Mobile-first immersive experiences can be offered to anyone, whether they are connected or disconnected to the broadcast,” says Roriz.
The ‘connective tissue’ is crucial: real-time data middleware, IP-based transport, genlock and PTP timing, and increasingly cloud and 5G, adds Ventre. “Getting stats data, tracking data, camera tracking data and engine scene state aligned to the same frame is the unglamorous work that makes everything else look magical,” he says.
Operational readiness is a bigger challenge than cost, according to Roriz. “Cost is still a factor, and ROI and KPIs should be considered from the beginning, but complexity is often underestimated. The problem is not only installing the technology; it is making it reliable every day and making sure creativity smoothly turns into photorealistic backgrounds and stunning augmented reality.
“Broadcasters need repeatable workflows, not one-off demos. The best approach is to start with a clear editorial and business use case. Best practice is when the audience sees a powerful visual story, but the production team experiences a controlled, repeatable, familiar workflow.”
Bettencourt says the best virtual sets succeed when three things are true: the story drives the design, the technology is rock solid and invisible and the talent feels completely natural using it.
“When those align, the audience doesn’t notice the set and that’s when you have really won. Beyond that, pay attention to tracking, calibration and lens data. Most ‘bad’ virtual sets are actually examples of bad tracking,” she warns.
She also recommends matching light direction and intensity to real lighting, and controlling shadows and reflections. “Lighting continuity is what makes the brain accept the illusion,” explains Bettencourt. “Make sure the talent is comfortable and can interact realistically with desk edges, screens, rails and floor markers. Keep it simple, minimising operational clicks and latency.”
The best operators are increasingly running AR and virtual production as a continuous product, not a per-show project, says Ventre. “That’s the structural change that separates the broadcasters who are pulling ahead from the ones still treating each event as a bespoke build. The technology has matured fast enough that the differentiation is now in the operating model, the editorial taste, and the engineering discipline around it. This sounds underwhelming, but it’s exactly where the on-air gap is between average and best-in-class,” he concludes.
SVG Europe’s Sports Graphics Forum took place in London on 6 May, welcoming speakers including Dominik Scholler, DFL, Patrick Desson, Sky Sports, Kevin Sandford, Warner Bros. Discovery and Rosemary Lokhorst, Badass Studios. Watch Session Recordings.
