This decade has been kind to the San Francisco Giants and their fans. After not winning a World Series Championship for 56 years after their move from New York, the team has now won three in the past six seasons and are primed again this year to be in contention come October.
This recent success has also raised the profile of the team and grown the fanbase nationally as well as internationally. With this exponential growth, the Giants now have a large number of fans who either live in an area that the team will never play in or only will be in town for a few days a year.
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Enter Virtual Reality.
One of virtual reality’s big potential utilizations is derived from engaging fans with the experience of being at the game all the while being halfway around the world or simply down the block from the stadium.
In the heart of Silicon Valley, the Giants have been quick to embrace this new technology and give their fans views and sounds from the game that could only be replicated by being at the game or on the field itself.
When the team had one of its legends, Willie Mays, come onto the field on Opening Day this season, he made one of his rare on field appearances and gave fans the thrill of witnessing one of the greatest players in the sports history in person. It is a moment that only a small few got to enjoy in person, but many more would have wanted to see given the opportunity.
With new virtual reality technology, fans can not only see the video of Mays’ appearance on the field April 7, but can also get a vantage point like they were right next to him on the field.
The Giants are the latest professional sports team to embrace virtual reality, whether it be engaging your fans or using it as a practice tool for game preparation. It was reported early this year that the consumer technology could be worth $30 billion by 2020.
For baseball fans the benefits are getting easier to envision. With the large majority of fans unable to play professional sports, the curiosity of what it feels like to be one of the players we watch every day is something that appeases fans at their very core. Here’s an example of a Jaunt 360 at a Mets game:
At a Giants game that could include placing fans in the viewpoint of catcher Buster Posey as former World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner warms up for a start, or perhaps even getting a first-hand view of Hunter Pence’s commute he has every game to the ballpark on his infamous scooter.
“We thought it would be cool to bring our fans into somewhere they’ve never been before, into the batting cages, onto the field, and to bring that as part of the ballpark experience,” said Bryan Srabian, the Giants’ vice president of digital media told Fast Company.. “We worked closely with our players and coaches down in spring training, kind of explaining what we were doing…trying to think what would fans want, and where would they want to be.”
The Giants have partnered with Jaunt for the production of the VR content and plan to do so all season long and continue to add new content for fans to consume as the season progresses. This production began in spring training in Scottsdale, AZ and has continue through the first 5 weeks of the 2016 season.
Each game has two Jaunt film crews with their virtual reality cameras covering the field and stands looking for the best potential content pieces.
Like with any new technology there is likely to be growing pains with the production of this material and the dissemination to fans all over the world. What is clear though is that virtual reality technology is going nowhere and is something professional sports teams should begin to adopt sooner rather than later.
If the Giants can continue their even year season success, there could be some good virtual reality views come this fall.