AI & Sports in Vegas: Future Tech Preview | Literature City

The Sphere in Las Vegas, where the highlight of 2026 CES is staged. Tens of thousands of people flocked to this venue, which pushes entertainment to the extreme, to witness a technology show. There is no doubt that from Lenovo Group to Nvidia, from Yang Yuanqing to Huang Jenxun, Lenovo Tech World brings together leading companies and leaders in global technology, especially in the field of AI.

At the same time, sports are also placed on the center stage along with AI technology. The combination of technology with the World Cup and F1 makes those technologies that seem very far away from us become emotional, direct and desirable under the narrative of sports.

Since its inception in 1967, CES has always represented the forefront of global technological development. At the beginning of every new year, it tells the story of “tomorrow” to human society. In Las Vegas in 2026, when Lenovo Group moves Tech World into a super stage like Sphere, it will not only be AI, computing power and cloud technology that will be thrust into the spotlight, but also another protagonist – sports.

This is not in line with the inertia of traditional technology conferences. A common identity of sports at CES is that they are often sponsors and marketing partners of technology companies. But in this Lenovo Tech World, sports are regarded as a set of “system engineering” that needs to be seriously dismantled. Because of this, ECO Krypton appeared on the front line of CES for the first time.

From Yang Yuanqing sharing the stage with FIFA President Infantino, to Lenovo’s concentrated display of multiple “Football AI” capabilities prepared for the 2026 World Cup on the stage, to the demonstration of the results of years of cooperation with F1, sports have become a main thread in Lenovo’s story about the application of hybrid AI technology in different scenarios.

Putting sports at the center of the AI narrative is a very realistic choice. The World Cup and F1 represent two extremes of sports complexity: one is known for its influence, attention, and event scale, and the other is known for its engineering limits, real-time nature, and low error tolerance. Together they form a harsh evaluation environment – any technical solution, if it can run stably under such conditions, has the possibility of migrating to more industries.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup will expand to 48 teams and 104 games for the first time, and will be jointly hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Infantino’s public description of this World Cup as “the largest in history” is no exaggeration: the longer schedule, more dispersed cities, and more complex cross-border logistics and security systems mean that the event itself is no longer just a 90-minute game, but a “city management system” that lasts for several weeks.

The backend of FIFA event operations includes a large number of simultaneous online nodes such as venue networks, broadcast links, referee systems, team workflows, fan movement lines, ticketing and service systems. For this reason, Lenovo’s presentation of World Cup-related content at Tech World is particularly “engineered”: it not only treats technology as an ornamental device, but also treats it as infrastructure that can reduce complexity.

At the Sphere site and in subsequent interviews, Lenovo Group explained in detail three types of innovative applications related to FIFA.

First of all, Football AI Pro launched by Lenovo and FIFA is described as an AI analysis and knowledge assistant for all participating teams: through natural language interaction, coaches, players and analysts can quickly call game and training data, obtain tactical insights, player performance evaluation and visual content output. FIFA technical director Nacho Fresco told Krypton News that the goal of the World Cup has never been to make a few strong teams stronger, but to make advanced analysis capabilities as inclusive as possible so that countries and teams at different levels and stages of development can fairly use these first-hand data resources.

The second type of combination of technology and football is related to the penalties on the field. It is understood that the 2026 World Cup will further incorporate AI-driven 3D player virtual images into the semi-automatic offside judgment system: Players on the field will be quickly scanned to generate 3D models with personal body characteristics, which will be used to present key decisions such as offside more clearly and accurately.

For the audience, this is not simply a “more advanced” visualization, but an enhancement to the interpretability of penalties – when disputes arise, technology needs to provide an understandable chain of evidence.

The third type of technology upgrade is related to fans’ viewing experience. The referee’s perspective “Referee View” will continue to appear in the World Cup based on the previous trial run of the Club World Cup, and will further improve the picture quality through AI stabilization and enhancement, providing new content streams for broadcasters.

It is worth noting that in Lenovo’s internal discussions, this type of function is not regarded as a “show-off point”, but more like a narrative language to connect young audiences: allowing fans to get closer to the tension of the game scene, and making it easier to understand the referee’s judgment situation in high-speed confrontations.

Shifting your gaze from the green field to the roaring track, the logic of combining technology and F1 pushes the problem to the other end.

F1 IT technical director Chris Roberts told Krypton that unlike the “super scale” of the FIFA World Cup, F1’s difficulties come from “extreme density”: huge data volume, extremely long links, extremely low latency, and extremely high stability requirements. More importantly, F1 is rewriting its own operations through remote production and centralized processing – a large amount of content no longer has to be completed on-site at the track, but the data is sent back across continents and processed and distributed in real time in production centers such as the UK.

This means that the value of AI is not only reflected in “seeing more clearly”, but also in “more stable systems, higher efficiency, and less flow of personnel and equipment”, thereby providing a realistic fulcrum for the sustainable operation of the event.

When the World Cup and F1 appeared on the stage of Lenovo Tech World, they jointly pointed to a conclusion: the reason why sports have become an important stage for AI is not just because sports require more technological support, but because sports events provide the ultimate application environment for the development of technology, allowing AI to move from “usable” to “reliable” and from “display” to “integration.”

If in the past technology was more of a one-way “service to sports,” then in the cooperation presented at CES, a more important change is taking place: sports are shaping the technical path of AI with its own complexity and non-negotiability.

This kind of shaping does not stay at the conceptual level, but is reflected in specific and realistic problems.

In cooperating with FIFA, Lenovo and FIFA first faced a long-standing practical problem that has always been difficult to completely solve – the extremely uneven distribution of data and analysis capabilities among different teams.

FIFA Innovation Director Johannes revealed to Krypton News that for a long time in the past, top teams had complete data analysis departments and mature technical support systems, while teams with limited resources often could only rely on limited samples and manual experience. This gap will not disappear naturally as the level of competition increases. Instead, it will be further amplified on a highly concentrated stage like the World Cup.

It is against this background that Football AI Pro was introduced into the World Cup system. Its value is not just to improve analysis efficiency, but to use generative AI and intelligent agent capabilities to allow teams to directly interact with the data system in natural language and quickly obtain tactical analysis, player performance evaluation and historical comparison results. Complex data processing, model calling and computing power scheduling are systematically hidden in the background, making it possible for the first time for “data capabilities” to be universalized at the technical level.

Similar logic is also reflected in the reconstruction of the referee system and the viewing experience. Although VAR technology has significantly improved the accuracy of penalties, it has not simultaneously solved the issue of interpretability of penalties. Controversy often stems not from the results themselves, but from the audience’s inability to understand how the technology arrived at the results.

The VAR 3D digital human solution highlighted at CES is a direct response to this. Johannes told Krypton that the core goal of this plan is not to demonstrate technical capabilities, but to make penalties understandable and trustworthy again. At the same time, the introduction of the referee’s perspective AI image enhancement system is also quietly changing the way of watching games. The first-person perspective picture is no longer just a novelty element, but has gradually become an important tool to help fans understand the logic of referee judgment. This change is especially obvious among young viewers.

If in the World Cup scenario, AI first needs to solve the issues of scale, collaboration and fairness, then on the F1 track, AI faces another more demanding test – real-time performance and system stability under extreme engineering conditions.

Chris revealed that a large amount of event content is no longer produced on-site at the track, but is instead processed centrally in the UK through the infrastructure provided by Lenovo. Racing may take place in Melbourne, Singapore or Las Vegas, but data from the cars, tracks and broadcast systems travels across continents in a fraction of the time, being received, processed and distributed in real time.

This model places extremely high demands on the AI system. Screen switching must be consistent between different vehicles and different cameras, data processing must be controlled within extremely low latency, and the system must continue to operate stably despite changing global network conditions. Any mistakes in any link will be directly reflected in the audience experience.

More importantly, this remote and centralized production method is fundamentally changing the operational logic of the event. The large-scale cross-border movement of personnel and equipment is significantly reduced, and the carbon emissions and operating costs of the event are subsequently reduced. “These capabilities were not designed once and for all, but are the result of continuous efforts in many years of event engineering practice,” Chris said.

In this process, sports have gradually transformed from users of AI to an important force in promoting the maturity of AI architecture.

With the explosion of AI, every industry is facing development, subversion, and even disappearance. So for the sports industry, a more fundamental and easily overlooked question is: As technology continues to pour into sports, what role should AI play?

During CES, Krypton also participated in many sports technology keynote speeches and roundtable discussions organized by different companies such as Deloitte, WPP and Variety. Colleagues across the ocean also frequently talk about how technology should empower sports in the AI era. Most people unanimously mentioned one judgment: AI is of course a long-term trend in the development of human society, and sports cannot stay out of it, but the role of technology in sports should never be the “protagonist.”

This point was explained particularly clearly by Hu Guanzhong, senior vice president of Lenovo Group, in his communication with Krypton Body. He repeatedly emphasized that the premise for technology to enter sports is not to prove how advanced the technology itself is, but to answer a simpler question – is it really serving sports?

In Hu Guanzhong’s view, the biggest difference between sports and other industries is that it is not a system that purely pursues efficiency or certainty. The charm of sports largely comes from imperfections, uncertainty, and people’s true reactions in extreme situations. If the intervention of technology is just to show “what else we can do” and ignore the expressive logic of sports itself, then this technology is likely to be counterproductive.

He gave a seemingly subtle but very representative example.

In the design of the referee’s perspective lens, the technical team can use algorithms and hardware means to make the picture smoother, clearer, and even close to a “movie-level” effect. From a technical perspective, this is not difficult. But the problem is that if the picture is over-stabilized, the jitters and swings caused by the referee when running at high speed, making sudden stops, and turning around will be eliminated, and these subtle instability are precisely an important part of the referee’s true perspective.

Without these details, what the audience sees is no longer “how the referee is watching the game”, but a distorted perspective that has been beautified by technology. The picture may look better, but it is even less realistic.

In Hu Guanzhong’s view, this is one of the most common misunderstandings in sports technology: sacrificing the authenticity of the sport itself in order to demonstrate technical capabilities.

This judgment also provides an important coordinate for understanding the future relationship between AI and sports.

Technology can and should certainly improve the fairness, efficiency and understandability of sport. VAR, 3D digital people, and intelligent analysis systems are all established under this logic. But their common premise is that technology always stands “behind the scenes” to help humans better understand and participate in the game, rather than replacing the emotion, rhythm and uncertainty of the game itself.

In other words, what sports need is not an “impeccable and perfect system”, but an auxiliary system that can lower the cognitive threshold, bridge the information gap, and enhance the sense of participation without disturbing the essence of sports.

This also means that the future evolution direction of AI in sports may not lie in the introduction of more and more dazzling technical forms, but in the ability to judge “when to use technology and when to restrain technology.” Really mature sports technology does not make the audience aware of the existence of the technology, but when the audience is completely immersed in the game itself, the technology has quietly completed its work.

In this sense, the integration of AI and sports is not a simple technological upgrade path, but a relationship that requires continuous calibration. The more powerful the technology, the higher the requirement for a sense of boundaries. Only when technology always understands that “it is not the protagonist” can sports retain its core charm while being empowered.

Looking back at all the discussions about sports and AI at CES this year, we will find an intriguing change: the technology itself is gradually relegating to the back row of the narrative, and “how to be used” and “whether it is restrained” have become more important issues.

In sports, a field that highly relies on human emotions, judgment and uncertainty, the significance of AI has never been to create a perfect system, but to help humans better understand the game, participate in the game, and return attention to the sport itself. When technology truly matures, it often no longer needs to be emphasized over and over again. What the audience will remember will not be the algorithm, model or computing power, but the story, suspense and emotion of the game itself.

Those truly successful sports technologies are precisely those that make people “not feel the existence of technology.”