NEW YORK — Major League Baseball will soon begin providing a virtual world in which fans wearing Google Daydream headsets can watch every game live and on-demand while tracking pitches with a 3D visualization of the strike zone.
At Bat VR is set to launch June 1, enabling MLB.TV subscribers to watch live games while in the comfort of a virtual batter’s box that brings real-time data. If viewers want to see more than the full screen game, they’ll have the ability to see in 3D a hitter’s hot/cold zones based on OPS while he’s at the plate and pitch-by-pitch sequences from a pitcher based upon knowledge of those zones. Statcast metrics such as exit velocity and launch angle can be easily accessed as well.
To be clear, this isn’t watching live games in virtual reality, but rather watching a traditional feed inside a VR environment that is very much immersive compared to, say, the living room. For those who don’t have access to a television or computer but want to catch the game in a virtual space complete with scores, stats, schedules and standings, a Daydream headset will do.
“We truly believe here at MLB that the next frontier for data visualization will be immersion, allowing the fan to get inside of the data,” MLB Advanced Media Vice President of Games & VR Jamie Leece said. “VR empowers us in a way that no other medium does to let the user dive into the data and experience it in just a whole new profound way.”
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At Bat VR also not only enables viewers to watch select 360-degree video provided by MLB and its teams, but also provides a platform for the league to potentially showcase a game of the week shot in 360 in the future, according to Leece.
“We think that 360 video for sports is very nascent. It’s very early,” Leece said. “We’re going to be working with some partners to try to get that process going and find out how that works for baseball, and as that engagement increases and as that technology develops, we’ll lean in a little bit more.”
While NBA Digital and NextVR partnered this season to broadcast one NBA LEAGUE PASS game per week live in virtual reality, baseball is a more difficult game to shoot in VR for a quality broadcast experience given the large field of play. In South Korea and Japan, broadcasters have experimented with VR over the past year.
“I don’t see those live (VR) games coming into this app for a bit,” Leece said.
But MLBAM is merely scratching the surface with the launch of At Bat VR, which can bring fans that much closer to the game.