Brooklyn Nets Debut AI 360-Degree Replays at Barclays Center, and a Startup Wants to Put the View in Fans’ Hands
The Nets' new replay system stitches together camera angles from around Barclays Center into a 360-degree view shown on the jumbotron, while Toronto startup Peripheral works on a version that would let viewers move around a play themselves.
The Brooklyn Nets debuted an AI-powered 360-degree replay system at Barclays Center for the team’s 2026-27 home opener, giving fans a three-dimensional recreation of the action on the court, according to the New York Post.
The system was used throughout the game to show dunks, blocks and steals. The replays were broadcast on the arena jumbotron and published on the team’s social media channels. Cameras placed around the arena near the suite level each record the game from a different angle, then send the footage to the cloud, where an AI model built by Alibaba stitches it together. The process takes 15 to 20 seconds, the Post reported.
Angela Pennyfeather, a Brooklyn native who has attended Nets home openers for years, told the Post the result was new to her. “It was pretty phenomenal,” she said. “We’ve never seen anything like it.” She said the finished replay was “kind of like art.”
Keia Cole, chief digital officer of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, the Nets’ parent company, told the Post the team wants the system to draw in younger fans. “One of our big goals is building the next generation of Brooklyn Nets fans,” she said. “This is a tool built to wow them.” Cole said basketball moves so fast that it can be hard to follow the mechanics of a play, and she called the replays “a nuanced way to slow down the game.”
Nets owner Joe Tsai is the cofounder and chairman of Alibaba Group, the Post noted. Alibaba has shown the same technology before, including at the Milan-Cortina Olympics, with setups around 17 sports.
How a second system would let viewers move
A separate company is working on a version that would give viewers more control. Peripheral, a spatial intelligence company based in Toronto, captures basketball games with 18 cameras placed around an arena and recreates the scene in three dimensions, according to the Post.
With an Xbox controller, an operator can move to any point on the court or around the arena to see a play from that spot, and can lock onto one player and replay the game from that player’s perspective. Peripheral’s cameras also capture biomechanical data on how players move, down to individual finger joints, the Post reported.
Kelvin Cui, a Peripheral cofounder who previously worked on self-driving cars at Tesla, said teams could use the data to study players’ physical tendencies and build protocols to prevent injuries. Coaches could show a team how a play unfolded from the other side of the court, and the league could use it to help with officiating. “The goal is to have all of these applications out this season,” Cui said.
What comes next for fans at home
For now, the Nets system can only be seen on the arena jumbotron or through the team’s social media channels. Peripheral is working with multiple NBA teams on permanent installations, though the company cannot yet say which ones, the Post reported.
Peripheral was founded in 2024 by Cui and Mustafa Khan, then 21 and 22 years old. Khan previously worked in the superintelligence arm of Huawei. The company was selected for the NBA’s Launchpad incubator program in 2025, and its work at the 2026 Summer League in Las Vegas included clips shared by the Toronto Raptors that went viral on X, Cui said. The company now wants to put controllers in fans’ hands so they can watch a game in a video game-like setting.
“This is how we get younger audiences back into live sports,” Cui said, “give them an interactive experience closer to what they’re used to in 2K.”
Reporting based on coverage by the New York Post.
