Angela Pennyfeather, born and raised in Bed Stuy, has been going to Brooklyn Nets’ home openers for just about as lengthy as the Nets have performed in Brooklyn. But this yr was completely different.
For the 2026-27 Nets’ season, the Barclays Center debuted a revolutionary AI-enhanced replay system that gives followers something completely new: a near-perfect 3D-recreation of the on-court motion.
Alibaba and the New York Nets collaborated on a new AI-powered 360-degree replay system that debuted at the Barclays Center the night time of the Nets 2026-27 home opener. Courtesy of the Nets
The tech was on show all through the sport to spotlight dunks, blocks and steals. Replays were broadcast on the jumbotron and printed 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.
An engineer with Peripheral, a spatial intelligence firm primarily based in Toronto, works to set up a digital camera at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, home of the 2026 NBA Summer League. Courtesy of Peripheral
In the not-so-distant future, AI-powered replay methods will enable followers anywhere in the world to work together with the sport from views never before potential — say, immediately under the hoop at a basketball sport, or from inside the batter’s field at a baseball sport — 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 father or mother firm that owns the Nets, advised The Post. “This is a tool built to wow them.”
The Nets’ 360-degree replay system was created by a set of 64 cameras positioned all around the area close to the suite degree. Each data the sport from its distinctive angle, then sends its knowledge to the cloud, where an AI-model constructed by Alibaba sews the footage collectively. Nets proprietor Joe Tsai is the cofounder and chairman of Alibaba Group.
Alibaba’s new replay system makes use of 68 cameras from all around the area to sew collectively a 360-degree perspective of the sport’s prime highlights. Nets
Peripheral is a spatial intelligence firm primarily based in Toronto that captures basketball video games with 18 cameras positioned around an area and then recreates the scene in three-dimensions. Toronto Raptors
The course of takes only 15 to 20 seconds.
And the remaining product — “it’s kind of like art,” Pennyfeather said.
The Alibaba Group has proven off the know-how before, including at the Milan-Cortina Olympics with set-ups around 17 sports activities.
“[Basketball] games move so quickly, it’s hard to understand the mechanics and the complexity of a move,” said Cole. “This is a nuanced way to slow down the game.”
Kelvin Cui (left) and Mustafa Khan (proper) are the co-founders of Peripheral. They come from the autonomous automobile division at Tesla and the synthetic superintelligence arm of Huawei, respectively. Courtesy of Kelvin Cui/ Peripheral
As of now, you can only see the 360-degree replay system on the area’s jumbotron or via the Nets social-media channels, but a Toronto-based startup is working to carry comparable views to every display screen in America.
Peripheral was based in 2024 by Kelvin Cui and Mustafa Khan, then 21 and 22 years outdated. The following yr, their firm was chosen to be a half of the NBA’s incubator program, Launchpad.
Their work in the incubator culminated in Las Vegas at the 2026 Summer League, where Peripheral unveiled their product to league executives.
“We were able to show off our full videos for the first time. The Raptors [shared] some clips that went viral on X, fans really liked it, and the NBA invested,” Cui said. “So, yeah, it was sick.”
Peripheral demoed their spatial intelligence capabilities to NBA executives at the 2026 Summer League and are at present working with a number of groups on everlasting installations. Courtesy of Kelvin Cui/ Peripheral
Peripheral’s know-how works largely the same means as Alibaba’s — but Peripheral’s mannequin will enable viewers more freedom. With an Xbox controller, the operator can ‘fly’ to any level on the court docket or around the area to see what a play appears to be like like from that level of view. They can even lock into an particular person player and replay the sport from their perspective.
Peripheral’s cameras seize not just the volumetric knowledge of how the sport is unfolding, but also biomechanical knowledge of how gamers are shifting — down to particular person finger joints.
Cui, who beforehand labored on self-driving vehicles at Tesla, sees functions nicely beyond broadcasts. Teams could use the know-how to higher perceive their gamers’ bodily tendencies and develop protocols to forestall accidents. Coaches could use it to present their team how a play unfolded from the other facet of the court docket. The league could use it to assist with officiating.
“The goal is to have all of these applications out this season,” Cui said.
Inside Barclays Center, where the Nets debuted a revolutionary AI-powered replay system on opening night time. Courtesy of the Nets
And the know-how is only getting higher. Less than a yr in the past, Peripheral was working with a 32 digital camera set-up, but that quantity is now down to just 18. The AI-model is skilled on actual video games, and the more it data, the sooner, cleaner and more environment friendly it becomes.
Peripheral is at present working with a number of NBA groups on everlasting installations, though the firm can’t yet say which ones. In the future, the firm desires to get the controllers into followers’ palms so they can watch their favourite team in a video game-like atmosphere.
“There’s a lot of creative opportunities here for people who are producing the game for [television] or on the jumbotron,” Cui said. “[But also], this is how we get younger audiences back into live sports — give them an interactive experience closer to what they’re used to in 2K.”
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