Most on-screen graphics arrive after the moment they explain

Broadcast statistics are chosen for what looks good in a box rather than for what a viewer needed ten seconds ago.

A team scores, the replay runs twice, and then a graphic appears telling you that the scorer has now scored in three consecutive matches. Fine. Nobody asked. And the question people in the room actually asked out loud, which was whether the defender was playing him on, gets no answer at all.

The problem is not that broadcast data is bad. It is enormous and mostly accurate. The problem is the selection, which is driven by what can be prepared in advance and rendered cleanly, rather than by what the picture just failed to explain. Pre built graphics are safe. They are approved, they are branded, they fit the template, and a director can call one with a single word. Answering the live question requires somebody to notice the question, find the number, and build it in about eight seconds, which is a harder job and needs a person with judgement rather than a queue of assets.

So we get career totals during a chaotic passage of play, and possession percentages at moments when possession is the least interesting thing on the field.

The best use of an overlay is to show what the camera cannot. Where the offside line actually was. How far a fielder had to move. The distance a player has covered in the last five minutes when he is visibly slowing down. All of that is available and almost none of it appears at the moment it would land, because it has to be generated live and generating live is expensive.

Then there is the timing problem, which is separate and worse. Graphics tend to arrive during the replay, competing with the very footage they are meant to annotate, and a viewer cannot read a number and watch a moving image at once. Nobody can. Put the number on the still frame at the end of the replay and it doubles in usefulness for no extra cost.

My rule, if anybody wants it, is that a graphic should answer a question the audience has already asked. If the room did not ask, it is decoration, and there is a lot of decoration.

Interactive versions make this worse, not better. Giving me a menu of statistics to browse means nobody chose, and choosing was the job.