Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Live From THE PLAYERS Championship: Quintar's Jeff Jonas on How AR Enhances the Golf Fan Experience

10/03/2023

Live From THE PLAYERS Championship: Quintar's Jeff Jonas on How AR Enhances the Golf Fan Experience The fan-technology company aims to license its platform to content creators By Ken Kerschbaumer

Friday, March 10, 2023 - 8:52 am

Print This Story | Subscribe

Story Highlights

At the PLAYERS Championship, fans who have an Apple iPhone with AR capabilities are in for a treat. On Holes 16, 17, and 18, the PGA TOUR has deployed an AR platform that allows fans to hold their phone to a hole and see virtual flightpaths of shots on it. They can get caught up on action they might have missed, compare longest drives, and see how players played the hole.

The AR efforts have been built on Quintar's platform, and SVG sat down with Quintar co-founder Jeff Jonas - who has been EVP at Sportvision (1999-2016) and managing director, global business development, at Intel Sports (2016-21) - to discuss this year's deployment and the future of AR and Quintar.

Quintar's Jeff Jonas says AR can make the live event more compelling for fans in the stands.

Walk us through how you got to this point, with an AR service launched on Holes 16, 17, and 18 here at the PLAYERS Championship?

We started about two years ago, and [Quintar] co-founder Jay Jayaram and I were looking to do something new. We read an article about the coming hardware wars in AR between Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Snap and how they were all going to be butting heads. The article didn't discuss content. When I was at Sportvision and doing 3D 1st & Ten lines for ESPN for 3D television, it was fantastic. But there wasn't enough 3D content, and no one bought into 3D. This is kind of the same thing: someone's going to need help build this platform and develop compelling content for AR.

What kind of content do you think needs to be created?

The things that work for technology, especially in sports, either have utility or [provide] entertainment. I go back to the 1st & Ten line because that had both: it had utility, and it made the game more entertaining because you could see data in the video and know where the team was trying to get the ball. In AR, we didn't see anything like that, so we felt, Let's build this platform that will enable people to create content in AR that's meaningful.

What's at the core of the platform from a production, a programming, and a technology standpoint?

We figured out how to - what we call it - register large places: when you bring your camera or your phone out, it knows exactly where you're looking all the time. If you can do that, then you can start putting accurate features in that video.

I like to say it's like people have tried to do AR before with GPS and GPS is not that accurate: something could be placed 5 ft. this way or 10 ft. that way. Therefore, whatever I try to put in AR could be off by a number of feet. Someone had to solve for that, and that's what we do at the venue.

Fans at TPC Sawgrass can use AR to get much more information about a shot on the 17th hole.

Does that require placing technology on the course?

No, this is all machine learning, computer vision, and AI. It keeps learning and keeps getting better, which is kind of the exciting part that wasn't there at the time I was doing other stuff. There are things being done without human intervention, which is pretty cool. Once you're able to do that, you enable a lot of things. For example, we're seeing the ShotLink data, which is content. But then, we can borrow from other AR platforms.

I like to talk about Pokemon Go. It's a free-to-play game that's generating $900 million of revenue from advertising and merchandising, from customization. In sports, if we can enable venues to do AR, you have avid fans that can take part in that same type of thing. You can imagine a future where there's merchandising, there's advertising, there's customization, there's sports betting. But you need that platform to be there first for that to work.

Walk me through the machine learning. If you go to a new course, how does the process of learning the course begin?

We have a fairly simple survey process: we go and take some pictures. That's the easy part. Once we have that survey, the magic starts happening. The actual work starts happening with the engineers. The engineers create a 3D map of the area and do all kind of things that I'm not privy to because I'm not an engineer.

The cool thing about what we're doing is that, when people use the app, they're actually taking pictures the whole time. We can crowdsource some of that, so our surveys get better and better and better over time. Here at TPC, there can be 30,000 people on 17 using the app, and we're getting 30,000 pictures per second. That helps our system learn.

Over the years, efforts like this have involved apps. Do you have an app?

We have no desire to be an app company. What we want to do is take our SDK [software-development kit] and license that to people. Our theory is, there are people that know how to create content already - like a lot of the people in this compound - but no one's producing golf content in AR because there's no platform. What we want to do is, basically, give that platform to content creators and let them go nuts.

This week, we're being integrated into the PGA TOUR app for the first time; the AR app used to be a standalone app. That's big because of the audience [the PGA TOUR has].

We were talking with Tom Sahara, your SVP of production technologies, about whether this is meant to be used live, like holding up your phone while the players are hitting, or as a replay device. He said the focus is the latter. Can you explain why that is a more compelling experience?

We think it's most effective as a second-screen experience. A lot of le
LINK: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2023/03/10/live-from-the-players-champions...
See more stories from svg

More from Sports Video Group

08/09/2026

Comcast Technology Solutions Signs Multi-Year VOD Distribution Agreement with A+E Global Media

Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) has announced a multi-year agreement with A E...

08/09/2026

Spectra Logic Introduces Media Insight for Faster Discovery, Preview, and Retrieval of Archived Media

Spectra Logic today announced the availability of Media Insight, a new capabilit...

08/09/2026

Rogers and Quebecor Announce 12-Year French-Language NHL Sublicensing Deal

Rogers Communications and Quebecor have announced a 12-year sublicensing agreement for French-language national NHL games beginning with the 2026-27 season. TVA...

08/09/2026

IBC 2026: Skyline Communications and Bridge Technologies to Demonstrate Automated Broadcast Workflows

Skyline Communications and Bridge Technologies will demonstrate two integrations...

08/09/2026

IBC 2026: Boland Communications Makes European Debut of 4K55HDR7SNB

Boland Communications will make the European debut of its 4K55HDR7SNB 55-inch super-narrow-bezel monitor at IBC2026 (Stand 12.C57, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-1...

08/09/2026

Ateme and Comcast Technology Solutions Announce Collaboration for Live Video Delivery

Ateme and Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) have announced a collaboration comb...

08/09/2026

IBC 2026: Haivision Joins IBC Accelerator Programme on 5G Network Control for Live Production

Haivision has joined the IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme as part of t...

08/09/2026

Blackmagic Design Cuts Prices on PYXIS 6K and Cinema Camera 6K

Blackmagic Design has announced price reductions on its PYXIS 6K and Cinema Camera 6K models, effective immediately through Blackmagic Design resellers worldwid...

08/09/2026

IBC 2026: AI-Media to Showcase Multilingual AI Captioning and Translation Platform

AI-Media will demonstrate its LEXI Suite at IBC2026 (Booth 5.C34, September 11-1...

08/09/2026

Bitmovin and Ad Insertion Platform Deploy SGAI Solution for Belgian Broadcaster RTBF

Bitmovin and Ad Insertion Platform (AIP) have announced the first live deploymen...

08/09/2026

IBC 2026: Grass Valley to Demonstrate Story-Centric Newsroom Workflows

Grass Valley will demonstrate story-centric media workflows at IBC2026 (Booth 9.A01, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), connecting newsroom production, content ma...

08/09/2026

M2A Media and Ateme Partner to Scale Live Sports Video Delivery

M2A Media and Ateme have announced a partnership integrating Ateme's video processing solutions into M2A Media's MediaToAnywhere platform for live sport...

08/09/2026

IBC 2026: Ikegami to Introduce New UNICAM XE Cameras and Viewfinders

Ikegami will exhibit at IBC2026 (Stand 12.A31, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), including a Day 1 introduction of new cameras in the UNICAM XE series. Additiona...

08/09/2026

Caretta Research Shares Top Trends to Watch at IBC 2026

Broadcast industry analysts will be gathering plenty of insights at the 2026 IBC Show this weekend in Amsterdam, but Caretta Research has offered up some though...

08/09/2026

SENSHI and DAZN Announce Global Broadcast Partnership

SENSHI and DAZN have announced a global broadcast partnership that will bring SENSHI's live events free to viewers in more than 200 markets. The partnership...

08/09/2026

ESPN, ESPN2 Begin 4K HDR Rollout in the U.S. with New IP-Based Distribution Pipeline

New architecture built with Evertz will bring 4K HDR to Monday Night Football, N...

04/09/2026

IBC 2026: Eluvio Showcases Global Broadcast Fabric Updates

Eluvio will demonstrate updates to its Content Fabric platform at IBC2026 (Hall 8, Stand 8.MS5, and Future Tech Zone, Hall 14, Stand 14.A58, September 11-14). C...

04/09/2026

IBC 2026: LiveU Joins IBC Accelerator Smart Stories Consortium

LiveU has joined the IBC Accelerator's Smart Stories consortium, a multi-vendor initiative developing an open standard for Story Context interoperability in...

04/09/2026

IBC 2026: Telos Alliance to Demonstrate Audio Observability Capabilities

Telos Alliance will demonstrate new audio observability capabilities at IBC2026 (Stand 8.D37, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), covering monitoring of audio heal...

04/09/2026

World Team Tennis Announces Broadcast Partnership with Versants USA Sports

World Team Tennis (WTT) has announced a broadcast partnership with USA Sports, the sports division of Versant. USA Sports will air all six of WTT's live mat...

04/09/2026

Gravity Media Appoints Alex Pannell as Chief Business Officer

Gravity Media has appointed Alex Pannell as Chief Business Officer. Pannell joins from Appear, where he served as Chief Commercial Officer. He will be based in ...

04/09/2026

IBC 2026: Dalet Expands Dalia AI Platform with Agentic Workflow Capabilities

By Carrie Bowden Staff Writer Dalet has announced new agentic workflow capabilities for Dalia, its AI platform for media organizations, ahead of IBC2026. The ...

04/09/2026

IBC 2026: L-Acoustics Achieves EN 54 Certification Across Loudspeaker and Amplifier Portfolio

L-Acoustics has achieved EN 54 certification across a portfolio of loudspeakers,...

04/09/2026

IBC 2026: EVS and Matrox Video Announce Technology Partnership for Dynamic Media Facility Deployments

EVS and Matrox Video have announced a technology partnership integrating Matrox ...

04/09/2026

IBC 2026: NEP to Showcase Software-Defined Live Production

NEP Group will exhibit at IBC2026 (Hall 7, Stand 7.B55, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), demonstrating software-defined production capabilities across NEP Platf...

04/09/2026

FoMaSystems and ARRI Honored with Engineering Emmy for ARRI TRINITY 2

The Television Academy has awarded an Engineering Emmy to Dr. Roman Foltyn, Chief Engineer of FoMaSystems, and Curt O. Schaller for the development of the ARRI ...

04/09/2026

IBC 2026: InSync Technology to Showcase Frame Rate and Standards Conversion

InSync Technology will exhibit at IBC2026 (Stand 2.C30, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), demonstrating its FrameFormer and InGear conversion platforms for frame...

04/09/2026

Professional Triathletes Organization Signs Agreement with Sela to Host Events in Saudi Arabia

The Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) has signed a multi-year agreemen...

04/09/2026

IBC 2026: Accedo and MediaKind Launch Joint Streaming Solution for Operators

Accedo and MediaKind have announced a white-label, end-to-end streaming solution for operators, combining Accedo's native application framework and cloud-ba...

04/09/2026

IBC 2026: TAG Video Systems Launches TAG Blue Cloud Monitoring Platform

TAG Video Systems has announced TAG Blue, a cloud platform for shared monitoring visibility across video delivery chains, with AI-powered root-cause analysis. T...

04/09/2026

IBC 2026: TwelveLabs Launches Video Compliance Platform with NVIDIA Deepfake Detection

TwelveLabs has launched a video compliance platform for media organizations, inc...

04/09/2026

Television Academy and NATAS Announce 2026 Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy Award Recipients

The Television Academy and the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences ha...

03/09/2026

Creative Technology Group Announces Leadership Transition Effective January 2027

NEP Group has announced leadership changes at Creative Technology Group. Founder and CEO Graham Andrews will step away from day-to-day leadership at the end of ...

03/09/2026

NFL and TikTok Renew Multi-Year Partnership

The NFL and TikTok have announced a multi-year partnership renewal expanding the league's presence on the platform. NFL posts on TikTok increased more than ...

03/09/2026

Grass Valley Appoints Ronny Van Geel as Vice President, Cameras

Grass Valley has appointed Ronny Van Geel as Vice President, Cameras. Van Geel began his career in 1999 at Philips DVS and moved into product management in 2005...

03/09/2026

IBC 2026: Telestream to Preview Vantage Super Resolution

Telestream has announced Vantage Super Resolution, an AI-powered upscaling capability for the Vantage media workflow platform, developed in collaboration with N...

03/09/2026

IBC 2026: Solid State Logic TCA Tour

Solid State Logic (SSL) will debut the TCA Tour at IBC2026 (Hall 8, Stand 8.B45), a portable production system built from System T components in a desktop frame...

03/09/2026

IBC 2026: DPA Microphones Launches 6388 CORE+ Headset Microphone

DPA Microphones has announced the 6388 CORE Headset Microphone, making its debut at IBC2026 (Hall 8, Stand D60). The supercardioid headset features a physicall...

03/09/2026

IBC 2026: Qvest to Demonstrate Multi-Vendor Dynamic Media Facility Showcase

Qvest will present a multi-vendor Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) showcase at IBC2026 (Booth 10.C24), demonstrating how the EBU's DMF architecture can be imple...

03/09/2026

IBC 2026: Imagine Communications Debuts Magellan PanelFlex

Imagine Communications will showcase the Magellan PanelFlex control surface and other control portfolio updates at IBC2026 (Stand 1.B73, RAI Amsterdam, Septembe...

03/09/2026

IBC 2026: Bridge Technologies Launches Software-Based VB440 Deployment Option

Bridge Technologies will announce at IBC2026 (Booth 1.A71) that its VB440 production probe is now available as a software-based solution, deployable on commerci...

03/09/2026

Audio-Technica Launches BP350ST Mid-Side Stereo Microphone in Two Variants

Audio-Technica has unveiled the BP350ST MS (mid-side) microphone in two versions: the camera-mount BP350ST-UL and the boundary or gooseneck-mountable BP350ST-UB...

03/09/2026

IBC 2026: Jnger Audio flexAI Adds CastCompanion, 12G-SDI, NDI, and TVU MediaMesh Integration

Telos Alliance will introduce updates to the J nger Audio flexAI audio processin...

03/09/2026

DUNKMAN to Expand in 2027 with Team Competitions, Junior Division, and Global Qualifiers

DUNKMAN, the professional dunk league founded by Shaquille O'Neal in partner...

03/09/2026

Orlando Magic Tap DAZN as DTC Streaming Partner, Will Join OTA Distribution Plans for 2026-27 Season

Orlando's WRDQ TV 27, WFTV Channel 9 previously named over-the-air broadcast...

03/09/2026

EverPass Media Expands NFL Agreement with Netflix for Commercial Venues

EverPass Media has announced a multi-year commercial distribution agreement with Netflix, expanding on an existing partnership that has delivered NFL Christmas ...

03/09/2026

Yahoo Sports and Apple TV Partner on MLB and MLS Alternate Broadcasts

Yahoo Sports and Apple TV have announced a partnership to deliver alternate broadcasts of select Friday Night Baseball and MLS games on the Yahoo Sports website...

03/09/2026

BIG EAST's Scott Hecht on the Evolution of Campus Production and What Comes Next

With another academic year underway, college athletic departments across the cou...

03/09/2026

ESPN Debuts Revamped, Cutting-Edge Studio W in Bristol as New Home to NFL Live, College Football, and More

Facility becomes permanent home of NFL Live on Sept. 9; centerpiece studio for c...

02/09/2026

SVG Venues & Teams Summit 2026: All Sessions Now Available To Watch on SVG PLAY

Professional and collegiate clubs, leading vendors discuss current trends in stadium production On. Aug. 12, the 2026 SVG Venues & Teams Summit explored the ev...