The ongoing 2025 Australian Open has taken a unique approach to its live broadcasts on the official YouTube channel. Rather than traditional footage from Melbourne Park, viewers are treated to animated versions of tennis stars like Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Coco Gauff.

Tennis Australia has transformed the world's best players into animated versions of themselves to bypass broadcast restrictions at the Australian Open.

The Australian Open is re-creating tennis matches with players looking like something out of a Wii game. Here's why these graphics are being used.

If you’re tuning into the 2025 Australian Open, you may notice something very, very weird about the players on the court if you’re watching matches on YouTube. They look like they’re straight out of a video game, like Wii Tennis. The players’ bodies and faces have been replaced with Miis, basically. What gives?

The Australian Open might look a little different this year if you’re livestreaming it on YouTube. That’s because the tournament has put an animated overlay on some of its matches to avoid broadcast licensing conflicts, making players look an awful lot like Wii Sports characters, as reported earlier by The Guardian.

Record-holder of ten Australian Open titles, Novak Djokovic aims for another triumph in the Land Down Under as the year's first Grand Slam gets underway.

Maybe attending sports events in person is too been-there, done-that in the modern age. So, apparently, is watching the actual action on a TV, laptop or phone. The Australian Open is getting in on the newest trend in the sports world by re-creating tennis matches in video-game form.