Marc Hope welcomes Sony to complete the line up of the World Athletics Ultimate Championship Partner family.
Sony and World Athletics will be bringing broadcast innovation to life at the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest begin held from 11th to 13th September 2026.
Drawing on Sony’s long history of working with world-class broadcasters to showcase some of the world’s largest sporting events, this partnership will combine Sony’s technologies with World Athletics’ ambition to reimagine the presentation of athletics and create more immersive and emotionally engaging viewing experiences for fans around the world providing its proprietary optical tracking technology to create a new visualisation of sprint finishes, as a proof of concept at the championship.
Developed specifically for track disciplines, the technology captures athlete movement data and recreates the decisive moments of sprint races as immersive three-dimensional computer graphics (3DCG) visualisations. These assets will be integrated into the host broadcaster’s international feed, which will be aired by more than 30 major broadcasters worldwide, including the BBC (United Kingdom), NBCUniversal (United States), CCTV (China), ARD/ZDF (Germany), NRK (Norway), SVT (Sweden), L’Équipe (France), CPSL (Caribbean), Polsat (Poland) and TBS (Japan).
By transforming split-second performances into dynamic visual storytelling, this new proof of concept aims to give audiences a new perspective of athletics, helping them better appreciate the extraordinary speed and athleticism of the world’s greatest competitors.
Sony Corporation Senior Vice President Fumiatsu Hirai, said:
“Since Sony became an official partner of World Athletics, we have been constantly inspired by the passion of competing athletes and creators who deliver the distinctive perspectives of the sports to the fans worldwide. We are excited to collaborate with World Athletics for the Ultimate Championship to deliver new broadcast experiences that reimagine how the most decisive moments in athletics can be presented, helping bring fans closer to the emotion, intensity and stories that make athletics so compelling.”
World Athletics Chief Information Officer An Dang Duy added:
“The World Athletics Ultimate Championship is designed to challenge conventions and elevate how our sport is experienced by fans around the world. Working with Sony allows us to explore new possibilities in storytelling, technology and broadcast augmentation, creating never-before-seen moments that help audiences fully appreciate just how remarkable these performances are, while bringing them closer to the raw drama, intensity and extraordinary human achievement that define athletics.”