Holograms playing in the World Cup

On December 2, 2010, FIFA will announce in what country the 2022 World Cup will be played.  That's of domestic interest for many reasons, including because the United States is one of the candidate countries.  Today, CNN highlighted one of the other candidate countries: Japan.  Japan's bid includes the promise of technology enhancing the World Cup experience for those in the stadium and around the world.  The crown jewel of this proposal is a recreation of live games using holograms beamed to facilities around the world.

Public viewing of sporting events is growing in popularity.  Fans congregate in local bars, arenas, city squares, or movie theaters to watch their team play in games that are happening elsewhere.  This kind of social consumption of sport provides the opportunity to be with other fans of the team and enjoy the game together.  With holograms projected on to a field, would fans in Columbus pack Columbus Crew stadium in order to watch the USA player holograms run around the pitch while playing their World Cup game in Japan?

As a technology geek, I love this kind of stuff.  But I don't see why this is going to be limited to Japan's bid.  If the technology is perfected by then, I don't see what's stopping the event managers in other countries from licensing it.  It won't be the Japanese government building this equipment, it will be private companies.  They can sell their equipment and services in dollars as well as in yen.  One thought is that the Japanese government is more likely than others to use taxpayer money to help subsidize companies in this area.  If it is Japanese firms doing the research and development, then maybe this is a good use of public funds to help spur growth in these industries - it wouldn't make sense for the Qatarian government to subsidize Sony, but it does make sense for Japan to do so.

That said, the CNN article raises questions about the likelihood of this project actually coming to fruition.  These concerns were validated when I tried to access the Japan World Cup bid website a few minutes ago (Dec 1, 2010, 10:30 AM) and received the following page (screen shot below):