Advertising Insertion in Sports Webcasts

Sports content continues to generate a global appeal that transcends national, cultural, religious, and gender boundaries. Historically, TV technology's success has been intertwined with the development of televised sports. In the famous words of pioneering TV sports director Harry Coyle, "television got off the ground because of sports." Sports showcases offer a splendid platform to promote new media technologies. During the 2006 FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) World Cup tournament in Germany, major mobile companies launched a plethora of mobile TV services with such offerings as video streaming, text-based services, ring-tone downloads, and mobile blogging proposes a new way of enhancing the commercial value of sports video Webcasts. Clearly, the amount of advertising exposures must be managed to avoid viewers' perceiving them as unnecessary clutter in the video. As with legacy video broadcasting systems staffed by human operators, this check can be easily managed manually. Automatic machine detection techniques, however, can further facilitate advertising content insertion