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9 Ads per Minute: FIFA Cup 26 – "the price of the beautiful game"

181 points · 217 comments · KellyCriterion

  1. gps372 · · focus · HN ↗
    Most comments may have ignored this so far, but this is an interesting AI based research.

    At the end of the article is this excerpt

    >> Results from this research were generated using an AI computer vision model developed by the research team on Bristol’s Isambard-AI, the UK’s most powerful AI supercomputer. Isambard-AI powered the analysis of 172.6 hours of live match footage from all 104 games played between 11 June and 19 July 2026.

    So, basically now merchandizers, auditors, compliance monitors, etc. have a tool using which they can quantify whether broadcaster complied with contractual requirements of showing their ads/merch/logos as per contract. And if they missed, then they can quantify the delta - to sue the broadcaster for the balance as well.

    Also, it can enable many countries, where certain content is not allowed, then this tool can simply give them data points without having to employ someone, or have someone review the output of the AI tooling.

    1. thevinter · · focus · HN ↗
      I'm sure this was already easily doable for years by using plain and boring computer vision
      1. GuB-42 · · focus · HN ↗
        It was easily doable for even more years using plain and boring MK1 eyeballs and a stopwatch.

        If you are spending millions on ads, you can pay a couple of guys to watch TV and take notes.

        1. mapt · · focus · HN ↗
          For the World Cup, this was always easy.

          It was not easy for your local triple A baseball game being streamed to 500 viewers. This approach scales down.

          1. jcoder · · focus · HN ↗
            Hours of bleeding-edge CV analysis sounds pretty expensive for a triple-A game streamed to 500 pairs of eyeballs. They’ll be using the pen & paper approach, too.
            1. pixl97 · · focus · HN ↗
              If attention is all you have, humans are pretty bad at it for long boring tasks.
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