On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Manchester this past weekend, Arsenal traveled north to take on Manchester City in a match that had serious ramifications for Champions League standings. To the dismay of those in blue at Etihad Stadium, the game ended in a 2-2 draw that ultimately means Manchester United, and not City, now controls their own Champions League destiny.
But while the 60,000 fans who attended the game were focused on the pitch, a select few (myself included) were focused on what could very well be the future of sports broadcasting.
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For this game, a unique trio of Manchester City FC, Sky Sports and LiveLike, collaborated to bring City fans in London, New York and Melbourne the game through virtual reality (VR). LiveLike is a virtual reality company that wants to bring fans together via VR no matter where they are located in the world. On Sunday, they did this by having those fans put on a Samsung Gear VR headset and enter into a virtual stadium where they could maneuver to see the live broadcast, replays, stats and highlights.
For Manchester City, this push into virtual reality continues their experimentation with new technologies. Previously they had worked on using iON point-of-view cameras on First Team players during training, placing a 360⁰ camera on the roof of the players’ tunnel on matchdays, and launching a Google Cardboard-enabled CityVR app, which represented the Club’s first foray into the world of virtual reality.
Thanks to #mcfc fans in New York and Melbourne who were trying out watching #cityvafc via Sky VR with @LiveLikeVR https://t.co/3tDjlXW4Vq
— Manchester City FC (@MCFC) May 8, 2016
Before the game Diego Gigliani, Senior Vice President of Media and Innovation at City Football Group, and Miheer Walavalkar, Chief Business Officer of LiveLike, were kind enough to host me in a broadcast box up on the southeast side of the Stadium and discuss how they were working together on this unique virtual reality project.
Diego shared some tremendous insights and was very honest in his optimism about virtual reality and working with LiveLike.
“We as a club are always looking into how we as a club can adopt early technologies that can enhance the fan experience. We also look at how we use technology to enhance the football performance.
But of course, staying on the fan engagement side, we are always looking at what has to do with better and more immersive content. About a year and a half ago virtual reality was spotted as something we wanted to understand better and the best way to understand it is to actually start doing it. So we pulled together a plan to try and see what we could do with virtual reality for an immersive experience and from a content experience.
So the first thing that we did was, we started this path of live match viewing on VR when we met Miheer and their company. The other part of the approach was 360 degrees content. We managed to get our hands on a 360 camera, which are hard to get your hands on despite a lot of people saying that they sell them. And so we started creating some content on 360. With this we got a good response and even from us it felt like something that had legs in terms of the ability to use it for different things. Then obviously virtual reality is the next evolution from the 360 capabilities.
The first trial we did with LiveLike was in May of last season. We did the first match without the involvement of anyone else. It was just saying, ‘okay let’s see if their technology works and what’s the vision and how can it work.’ Once we saw that that had good potential we knew that if we wanted to do anything with live match then that was controlled by the Premier League and by the rights holders. So at that point we as a club sat down with the Premier League to understand what is their interest in doing this and their understanding of how possible it would be to do something externally. We positioned it as a trial and described the vision of a big match, the first live official match viewable in virtual reality. They liked the idea and at that point connected us with Sky who we obviously have a very good relationship with and they were also very keen to explore this. They had been doing lots of different things with VR themselves. So this fit in, as it did for us, as another piece in the approach to virtual reality. So they’ve been an important partner and we’ve now done four matches to just make sure that the experience works.
I would say that as you guys know, for virtual reality to mature it will take some time still. But we’ve seen in LiveLike, a company that has basically been able to backup what they’ve said in terms of being able to do something like this. So we think the experience is great because it proves the potential of where this can be taken.
I personally don’t think that today it’s an experience that would replace watching a game live or probably even on TV. But I do think it shows the amazing opportunities of what it could be. The ability to go to different camera angles, integrate different information layers and social in the future and actually get to speak with people who aren’t with you then I think it opens up a lot of opportunities.”
I then asked Diego where the future of this VR movement is going and does he envision ever selling virtual reality season tickets to fans around the world?
“I think there will be a future where you can have virtual tickets to games. And that virtual ticket will need to be much more enhanced than just being able to watch the equivalent of television. And I don’t know if it will be a season long thing or match by match but it will probably be commercialized by rights holders and not the football clubs directly because of the rights landscape. So I think the opportunities for us are more going to be around the content outside of a live match. But in the end, the value will come back to us because the broadcasters will find new ways to monetize it.”
On the production side of things, Steve Smith, Director of Sky Sports production, mentioned in a press release today that they too are bullish on the potential of virtual reality in the sports broadcasting business. “At Sky Sports, we’ve always been at the forefront of innovation, looking for new ways to deliver the best possible viewing experience. We are the first broadcaster to test live VR for Premier League football. Working in partnership with Manchester City and LiveLike has allowed us to push the boundaries once again. It is the next step in our VR story and the results are really impressive. Through our dedicated Sky VR Studio we will continue to explore opportunities across all genres of content in the Sky offering.”
From the LiveLike perspective, they are a one-year old startup that has a grand vision but very much benefit from working with established partners like a Sky. Miheer shared that, “Sky has been great to work with and have given a lot of feedback on what needs to change and what needs to improve and then provided some resources and support on the ground in terms of operational support. But more than anything else I think it’s just access and the opportunity to work with people on the broadcast side of things who have been doing it for decades now.
“LiveLike is focused on creating an atmosphere that allows fans to feel like they are in heart of the action while having everything they would possibly want around them. Today, this manifests itself in the form of a highly interactive environment with in-depth statistics, highlights and archived footage. In the future, fans can enjoy the game day action with family and friends regardless of distance and location. Partnering with Manchester City FC has given us the opportunity to showcase the powerful immersive experience virtual reality brings. Together we will continue to push the boundaries of enhancing fan engagement.”
After hearing these insights from Diego and Miheer I got to then try the live experience and view the game I was attending in person in virtual reality. I slipped on the VR headset and entered the virtual stadium where the game was playing. And it’s at this point in the story where it honestly becomes difficult to write about virtual reality. It’s simply something you have to experience. Suffice it to say that while my first impressions were that of excitement, it’s very evident that this tech is young. Like iPhone 3 young. But I can absolutely see the potential for building an environment that could one day make fans choose to “attend” their games virtually and I wouldn’t be surprised if ten years from now I look back on my experience this past Sunday and say, “I remember the first sports games to be broadcast live in VR and it was a landmark moment.”