Baseball has always been known as America’s pastime. It has also seen extreme success in Japan, and Major League Baseball saw over the last few months how the sport fares elsewhere, with a pop-up store in downtown London, baseball’s first retail space in Europe.
The store opened in September and is open until the end of 2016 with the goal of the store being to attract European fans and serve the ones that already follow baseball. The store featured team hats, jerseys, T-shirts, equipment — and virtual reality.
In the pop-up, shoppers can test a virtual reality headset equipped with MLB Advanced Media technology. The VR headset let fans who can’t easily get to a game experience what it was like to be at San Diego’s Petco Park, which was the host to the 2016 All-Star Game.
One thing featured on the VR experience was the Home Run Derby. Fans could step into the shoes of the players and swing for the fences. They were also able to share their game scores on social media as well as compete against their friends.
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According to Brooke Roberts-Islam, a writer for the UK Huffington Post, the VR headset had her “immersed into the spirit and atmosphere of the match at Petco Park,” and the pop-up store manager, Luke, “confirm[ed] the authenticity of the atmosphere re-created in the film.”
Roberts-Islam’s belief that the “MLB is set to go global with the expansion of Europe” plays right into Chris Park’s vision of expanding the MLB’s footprint.
“London is an important part of [Commissioner Rob Manfred’s] vision of growing the game and growing the MLB brand,” Park, the league’s senior vice president of growth, strategy & international, told FOXbusiness.com. “Park of what we’ve learned is what fans of baseball in London like and what they’re looking for. It’s not so much just a retail store for us, but an interactive place for us to serve our fans.”