When fans tune in to a live UFC fight or WWE match, they expect uninterrupted access to the action.In live competition, a single second can shift momentum or determine the outcome.
Because so much can happen so quickly, viewers are highly aware of anything that pulls their focus away from the action. That means advertisers have to be smart about how their messages appear inside the broadcast.
Advertising plays a major role in live sports broadcasting. It funds media rights, production crews, distribution networks, and the technology that brings live events to audiences around the world.
There is a difference between advertising that complements the experience and advertising that disrupts it.
A graphic that blocks part of the action or lingers on the screen too long does more than promote a sponsor. It competes with the event itself.
Erhan Ciris founded 4D Sight to solve that exact problem.
As the CEO of 4D Sight, a New York City-based video technology company, Ciris leads a team building what the company describes as a Perception Layer for live media. Powered by real-time AI models that are designed to understand the 3D space inside a broadcast as it unfolds.
Instead of placing flat and interruptive graphics over a video feed, 4D Sight processes a single live source in the cloud to understand the broadcast’s spatial and geometric structure. It then inserts photorealistic virtual advertising directly into the field of play, allowing the assets to feel integrated within the environment rather than layered on top of the action.
The system operates with ultra-low latency, typically within milliseconds, and removes the need for heavy on-site hardware or staff.
Under Ciris’ leadership, 4D Sight has secured multi-year partnerships with Tier 1 sports and esports organizations, including Riot Games and TKO, which includes UFC and WWE.
The goal is not to remove advertising from live sports, but to change how it appears within the frame.
Pressure Testing the Technology
Before expanding into traditional sports, Ciris began in esports, recognizing it as one of the most technically demanding broadcast environments.
He knew that if a system could handle the speed, camera movement, and visual unpredictability of competitive gaming, it would be strong enough to operate anywhere.
“I realized that if we could build an ultra fast AIcapable of handling the extreme complexity and speed of gaming, the application would be universal,” he said.
Esports became the testing ground. The team focused on building a system capable of interpreting space in real time inside fast-moving, high-complexity broadcasts. The technology had to perform reliably despite rapid gameplay and shifting camera perspectives.
By the time the company entered a partnership with TKO (UFC and WWE) in 2023, the technology had already been shaped under intense conditions.
Moving from esports to live sports added a new layer of complexity. The system now had to perform in fast, unpredictable, real-world broadcasts. Even so, the expansion showed that the same perception technology could handle the pressure of major live sports just as reliably.
What began as a focused effort to solve a technical challenge in competitive gaming had evolved into infrastructure now used across major live sporting events.
Expanding Broadcast Inventory Without Changing Production
In traditional sports broadcasting, advertising space has always been limited to physical space. A logo placed on a mat, on arena boards, or inside a stadium can represent only one brand at a time. Once that space is sold, there is no way to increase its value without physically changing the venue.
4D Sight expands what that space can do without changing how the event is filmed.
The company works directly with leagues and their commercial teams to build on existing sponsorship models, not replace them. Because the system reads the broadcast in real time, it can turn a fixed surface into flexible digital inventory.
That means the same mat, board, or in-game surface can display different ads in different regions at the same time. Fans in one country may see one sponsor, while fans in another country see a different one. All of this happens without changing the camera feed or disrupting the production process.
This flexibility is especially important in global sports, where a single event can air across multiple continents simultaneously. Advertising rules vary by country, and certain categories, such as betting or alcohol, may be restricted in one region and allowed in another.
Cultural expectations also differ, which means messaging that works in one market may not be appropriate in another.
By making physical space digitally adaptable, 4D Sight gives leagues a way to respect those differences while increasing the value of their existing inventory.
The Patent That Shaped the Platform
For Erhan Ciris, 4D Sight was not the starting point. Before the company became a commercial platform, he was focused on the more fundamental challenge of understanding how machines interpret space as it moves and shifts in real time.
He built his career around real-time perception systems. That research led to U.S. Patent 11,270,517, which protects the core technology used to insert digital content into live video.
The patent outlines a method for placing digital assets inside moving footage without disrupting visual continuity and later became the foundation for 4D Sight’s platform.
The company’s development accelerated through the UC Berkeley SkyDeck program, where Ciris focused on turning advanced research into technology that could survive real-world broadcast pressure.
Live sports leave no room for visible mistakes. A delayed graphic or visual glitch is instantly noticeable. In live broadcasts, errors are immediately visible.
That level of precision wasn’t new to Ciris. He built 4D Sight around it, drawing from his team’s experience in autonomous robotics and his own discipline in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
What Live Broadcasts Could Become
For Erhan Ciris, 4D Sight founder, virtual advertising is only the beginning. He believes that within the next three to five years, live broadcasts will transition from uniform feeds to formats that can be interpreted and adjusted in real time based on context and region.
That idea builds on the Perception Layer 4D Sight has already developed. Once a system can understand depth, motion, and space inside a live event, it can do more than place an ad. It can respond to what is happening.
Ciris also anticipates a shift toward what he calls multimodal creative infrastructure. In his view, AI systems will begin working from multiple types of reference material at once rather than relying on a single live feed. Video, still images, brand assets, spatial context, and historical footage could all serve as inputs.
He expects AI systems to increasingly rely on structured reference inputs to adapt live environments.
“Where most people get it wrong is believing the future is about better 2D overlays or faster rendering,” he said. “The reality is that the future is reference-driven and spatial.”
As he explains it, if a system cannot reason about a scene in three dimensions and work across diverse inputs, it will continue to feel artificial.
“The winners will be platforms that allow AI to understand, edit, and create within reality, not on top of it,” he explained.
Reducing Disruption in Live Moments
Live sports have always run on sponsorship. The logos on the mat, the branding around the arena, and the commercials during the broadcast have all helped make the event possible. That part has never been in question and probably never will be.
What Ciris believes is changing is not the presence of advertising, but how it shows up.
For years, television treated the screen like a flat surface. If a sponsor needed visibility, a graphic was placed on top of the action. As production tools improved, those graphics looked sharper and more polished, but they still felt separate from what was happening in the ring or on the field.
Erhan Ciris built 4D Sight around a different premise. If technology can actually understand the space inside a live event in real time, then advertising does not have to interrupt the moment. It can exist within it.
In live competition, timing is everything. Viewers tune in for the competition itself.
For Ciris, innovation is not about making ads bigger or louder. It is about ensuring monetization and commercial growth supports the broadcast without competing with it.
