A new virtual reality experience that debuted at the Detroit Tigers’ Comerica Park this season and challenges fans to hit against MLB pitchers, may drive revenue for teams as it rolls out to more ballparks next season.
Monsterful VR previously developed a training program for batters with input from MLB advisors, but recently expanded to also include a sports virtual reality entertainment division that CEO Jarett Sims believes will bring fans closer to teams and drive sales of concessions and merchandise.
To kick off the new division, fans at Tigers games were challenged this season to hit off starting pitcher Michael Fulmer with Tigers announcer Dan Dickerson calling each swing in a game called Play The Pros. Digital baseball cards with batting statistics were generated for users to share on social media.
Next season, Sims says the game will appear at more baseball parks around the country and feature whichever home pitcher is starting in real life.
“We want to tie it directly to the team in a way that builds fan loyalty and connects to what’s going on on the field,” said Sims in an interview with SportTechie. “There are plenty of cool activations that provide fans entertainment, but we strive to be more than that.”
Play The Pros isn’t just about entertaining fans between innings, as Sims believes it will ultimately drive top-line growth for franchises. As an example, he cited Monsterful VR’s partnership with the New Britain Bees minor league team in Connecticut, which had a stipulation that in order to play the virtual batting game fans had to provide proof that they purchased a Pepsi product.
That drove concession sales “pretty dramatically” and lead to spikes in sales of other concessions, such as pretzels and hot dogs, said Sims.
The system can be customized to drive discounts for users as well. In the virtual batter’s box, for example, teams could potentially set it up so that users rack up points that translate to discounts for food and merchandise at the stadium.
The Tigers, and baseball in general, are just the tip of the iceberg for Monsterful’s entertainment business. Sims says the company is building out a broader sports entertainment ecosystem and currently has several other sports in development that could span its virtual and augmented reality products to other major leagues.
The software can be easily adapted to other sports and scaled, said Sims. Monsterful VR sells a package to teams that includes the computer that runs the customized software and a sensor that can be placed on a wide variety of bats — from regular-sized ones to foam bats — that track swing dynamics. The software is device agnostic in terms of head mounted displays, though the Tigers used HTC Vive.
As for the software itself, Monsterful VR can remote in to push upgrades or add new customizations, which proved a particularly useful component the day before Play The Pros went live at Comerica Park. Fans were initially supposed to hit off former Tigers star Justin Verlander, but he was abruptly traded to the Houston Astros the night before launch. Monsterful VR’s engineers were able to change the game with 12 hours notice to reflect Fulmer and the launch went through as planned in the beginning of September.
Sims would have been aghast to swap out Verlander for a nameless avatar.
“You can’t just hit off a generic pitcher,” he said.