NBC Sports unveils “Fantage Point” camera—Instantly becomes most hated thing in Sacramento

Sacramento, California – Sacramento Kings fans should have been riding high after their team pulled off a gutsy 123-119 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, toppling the East’s best team without stars Zach LaVine and Domantas Sabonis. But instead of basking in the victory, many were too busy recovering from a different battle: the war on their eyeballs.

NBC Sports California, in a move that no one really asked for, decided Wednesday night was the perfect time to debut their brand-new overhead camera angle, dubbed “Fantage Point.” If that name sounds like something cooked up by a marketing team that’s never watched a basketball game, well, you’re not alone in thinking that.

Kings fans took to social media in full revolt. X user @ohitsbaileyy_ summed up the experience with a scathing review: “This Fantage Point camera is absolutely horrible. Makes the game unwatchable on the Kings broadcast.” Meanwhile, over on Reddit, where bad ideas go to be properly buried, a thread titled “STOP THE FANTAGE POINT” quickly gained traction. One user lamented, “I want to see the players interact with players from other teams. With the lame Fantage Point, you lose all the fun stuff.”

Apparently, NBC Sports California thought basketball fans wanted to feel like they were watching a game unfold from the rafters of Golden 1 Center, because nothing says “immersive experience” like trying to track 10 fast-moving players from a drone’s perspective. The Kings may have executed a flawless game plan, but the broadcast? Not so much.

As of now, there’s no official word on whether NBC plans to stop the Fantage Point experiment, or if they’ll double down and add even more objectively worse angles (perhaps a GoPro strapped to a referee?). But if Kings fans have anything to say about it— and judging by the social media backlash, they do— the only place this new camera belongs is in the sports broadcasting Hall of Shame.