There has been a lot of excitement about the opportunity for Virtual Reality (VR) in sports.
Rarely a week goes by without reports of a new sports team, athlete or league exploring how they can use the technology. Across training, live event broadcasts and fan engagement there are a range of compelling ways VR can offer something entirely new.
And this is happening now.
Just in August, NextVR live streamed pre-season soccer matches in VR, LA Galaxy announced a six-part VR documentary series and VR was all over the Rio Olympics.
But where is all this content going and who is actually watching it?
One big problem for VR remains the lack of devices in the market. Despite optimistic projections at the start of the year, given supply constraints with top-end devices and the largely free distribution of mobile VR, the highest estimates would suggest the number of people regularly consuming VR is in the low millions at best.
This is the classic “chicken and egg” dilemma – without great content people won’t invest in the hardware, but without a solid user base content creators struggle to justify the investment required.
Investing in the hardware for higher-end experiences is also an entirely new buying experience unless you’re already a hardcore gamer. You need a special high powered computer and ideally you’ll have a full room to spare and even after that there will be lots of wires to trip over. It’s early and understandably a bit clunky. It will get better, perhaps quicker than we expect.
So what can sports do right now?
One of sport’s greatest assets are the locations where the events are played out. Fundamentally, sports is an events business. Every week, sometimes multiple times a week, teams and individuals meet each other and compete to win. The destinations where these competitions play out at the elite level are iconic. Think Manchester’s Old Trafford for football, Wimbledon for tennis and LA’s Staples Center for basketball.
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People travel to these arenas from all over the world even when they’re not that interested in sports.
Despite their iconoclastic appeal, in general it’s getting tougher for professional teams to keep attracting fans to attend their events in person. It’s not surprising why. With the ever increasing digital options at our disposal and more broadcast slots allowing us to watch with our friends in bars or at home, our tech addicted, inherently lazy selves find it harder to legitimize the extra effort and cost.
Many would argue that VR could make this situation worse for teams. Why would I ever go to the match if I can just strap on a headset and have the best seat in the house? This is an argument I won’t explore in full here. But, in short, the technology is still a long way from creating a comparable experience (try wearing a headset for more than 20 minutes) and making the experience genuinely social is a challenging behavioral problem.
So let’s agree, that at least for the foreseeable future, physical attendance is a worthwhile thing to sustain and we’re not surrendering to a dystopian future of purely virtual stadiums just yet.
More promisingly, where VR is working best today and making actual money is in out of home locations. For example, The Void created a Ghostbusters experience in New York with Madame Tussauds costing upwards of $30 a ticket. Similarly, Alchemy VR has partnered with the Natural History Museum to create a special VR exhibition where you can journey deep beneath the waves at the Great Barrier Reef with David Attenborough as your guide.
There are multiple other projects in the works with cinemas and IMAX theaters priming themselves to add VR booths to their destinations. People love going to events and will pay for compelling ancillary experiences. Think about it, when did you last spend £5 on an app vs when you didn’t spend at least the same amount on anything when you left your home.
VR today is a very hands-on experience where you need people to help set-up, clean gear and guide people in and out of every experience.
Sports stadiums are perfectly set up for this and can capitalize by creating new activities for fans to do once they’ve made the effort to attend.
Imagine having access to an interactive, walk-through of the match day program or being able to step into a virtual training ground and see how your team trained for that week’s game.
Sports fans at events are a captive audience and will pay for experiences that bring them closer to their favorite teams and athletes.
Who’s leading the way?
The San Francisco Giants partnered with Jaunt to showcase a spring training VR video on Opening Day and set aside an area at AT&T park where fans could go and enjoy the experience.
Looking further forward, the Sacramento Kings, who invested in VR startup Voke, have ensured that their $500m+ new stadium set to open in October has the network infrastructure to handle VR. The Kings are exploring the potential to give every fan a VR headset to allow everyone to view, immersive, 360 replays of live footage.
These are early experiments and I’m excited to see what else can be developed.
Alex founded VsportR (a sports VR production company) and is currently working as a VR / AR advisor for several investors and production companies. If any teams or individuals want to chat about ideas feel free to get in touch!
Outside of sports, he is fascinated by psychology, the brain and how technology influences both.
There’s more about Alex at www.alexhandy.co.uk, drop him a note at alex@alexhandy.co.uk or on Twitter @AlexHandy1