New AI-powered technology will totally change how fans watch sports and it starts with the Nets

Angela Pennyfeather, born and raised in Bed Stuy, has been going to Brooklyn Nets’ home openers for just about as long as the Nets have played in Brooklyn.But this year was different.For the 2026-27 Nets’ season, the Barclays Center debuted a revolutionary AI-enhanced replay system that gives fans something totally new: a near-perfect 3D-recreation of the on-court action.The tech was on display throughout the game to highlight dunks, blocks and steals.

Replays were broadcast on the jumbotron and published across the team’s social-media channels. “It was pretty phenomenal,” Pennyfeather said.“We’ve never seen anything like it.”Even her teenage son was impressed — “and he’s always trying to keep it cool,” she said. In the not-so-distant future, AI-powered replay systems will allow fans anywhere in the world to interact with the game from perspectives never before possible — say, directly under the hoop at a basketball game, or from inside the batter’s box at a baseball game — and edit their own replay packages. “One of our big goals is building the next generation of Brooklyn Nets fans,” Keia Cole, Chief Digital Officer of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment (BSE), the parent company that owns the Nets, told The Post.

“This is a tool built to wow them.”The Nets’ 360-degree replay system was created by a set of 64 cameras placed all around the arena near the suite level.Each records the game from its unique angle, then sends its data to the cloud, where an AI-model built by Alibaba sews the footage together.

Nets owner Joe Tsai is the cofounder and chairman of Alibaba Group.The process takes only 15 to 20 seconds.And the final product — “it’s kind of like art,” Pennyfeather said. The Alibaba Group has shown off the technology before, including at the Milan-Cortina Olympics with set-ups around 17 sports.“[Basketball] games move so quickly, it’s hard to understand the mechanics and the complexity of a move,” s...