5 Things Human Commentators Got Wrong at the 2022 World Cup That AI Wouldn't
The 2026 World Cup is already under way, and the commentary is live again in every market. So before this tournament writes its own bloopers, here is a reminder of what the booths got wrong last time, and which of those mistakes never had to happen.
Commentary is hard, and the people who do it well are extraordinary. Some kinds of mistakes are avoidable by design, and those are the ones worth talking about.
Here are five from 2022, ordered from the most fixable to the least.
1. The Booth Told Viewers the Opposite of What Was Happening
During Spain against Japan, the English-language broadcast told its audience that Spain would be eliminated if they lost and Germany won, and that Spain needed an equaliser to go through. Spain did lose. Germany did win. And both Spain and Japan advanced anyway, with Germany going out on goal difference.
The numbers here were knowable in advance. Every qualification scenario for every scoreline can be worked out the moment the group's last matches kick off. Liat.ai can use the league table and the results you send before the match, so the commentary can talk about what each goal means for the group (optional).
2. The Bracket on Screen Was Wrong
After the groups finished, the live broadcast showed a last-sixteen bracket with the wrong fixtures, pairing teams that were not actually due to meet. The correct matchups were fixed and verifiable the instant the final group results were confirmed. This is the simplest category of error there is, a data-entry mistake on live television.
3. Player Names Were Mispronounced
Before the Germany match, well-known names including Neuer, Müller and Gnabry were stumbled over on air. Pronunciation is not a small thing. It is the most basic respect a broadcast owes a player and an audience. Liat.ai gives each language its own commentator. You can also send a guide to how you want the names pronounced, so each name is said the way you want (optional).
4. Commentary Bias Is Real, and It Is Measurable
In 2020, the Professional Footballers' Association worked with the research firm RunRepeat to analyse 2,074 statements made by English-language commentators across 80 matches. The findings were stark. Commentators were 6.59 times more likely to talk about power when describing a darker-skinned player, and 3.38 times more likely to talk about pace. More than 60 percent of praise about work rate, and a similar share of praise about intelligence, went to lighter-skinned players.
This is the kind of bias no individual sets out to produce. It emerges from habit, from language, from who is watching whom. A generation of broadcasters has been asked to correct it through training, and that work matters. Liat.ai can follow your own style guide, so the commentary describes every player to the same standard.
5. Refereeing Decisions, Where We Are Honest About the Limits
The 2022 tournament had its share of refereeing controversy, from the millimetric video review that allowed Japan's winner against Spain to the record eighteen yellow cards in Argentina against the Netherlands. Refereeing decisions belong to the referee, and AI commentary does not change them.
Liat.ai can still help during a video review. The commentary can say what the decision means for the score and the match, in the language you are watching in.
The Pattern
Four of these five errors share a root. They are failures of recall, of data entry, of consistency, and of preparation under time pressure. Liat.ai is built to handle those things. The fifth, refereeing, stays human, and we think it should.
Great commentary will always need human feeling. We built Liat.ai to avoid the mistakes that can be avoided.
Sources: World Soccer Talk and Sports Media Watch (reviews of the Qatar 2022 broadcast coverage); RunRepeat and PFA "Racial Bias in Football Commentary" study, 2020, as reported by CNN and Sky Sports; ESPN match records for the Japan goal-line review and the Argentina v Netherlands card record.
Hear Liat.ai commentate on a match on the demo page, read more about the system on the technology page, or get in touch about coverage.