Virtual and augmented reality.
They’re still two new pieces of technologies continuously being woven into how professional teams activate in-arena and engage with fans, but for Michael Conley, it’s especially the latter which he’s seen has been accepted by everyone, regardless of age.
On this week’s SportTechie Podcast, the Cleveland Cavaliers Vice President of Digital said he’s excited about AR for “what’s still to come.”
“AR is a great, unique fan-centric platform where fans can get a value out of using their mobile device and using triggers everywhere around their own native environment or an environment that we provide for them,” Conley continued. “But what it does is it gives them the ability to consistently engage with the brand through a new and exciting way that really strikes to the younger demographic or at least that was the mentality we thought when we started developing AR. What we found is AR in general is really embraced and accepted by any age group. Everybody likes cool things and likes to engage and interact with new and exciting functions.”
Get The Latest NBA Tech News In Your Inbox!
Conley highlighted two of the team’s recent uses, including a virtual pop-a-shot feature where fans could shoot buckets at the HUMONGOTRON inside Quicken Loans Arena. The team worked with pre-existing partner and mobile developer YinzCam to develop a specific augmented reality app for the unique fan engagement initiative. Around the start of the season, the Cavaliers also created an augmented experience around fans activating a championship ring to make it look as though it was on their finger.
With virtual reality, Conley said that last playoffs corporate partner Budweiser “wanted to come along with us for the ride” as the Cavaliers designed a platform geared towards giving just 750 fans a virtual perspective of one of the team’s first round playoff games against the Atlanta Hawks.
Fans could watch a series of four videos through the team’s mobile application or Budweiser’s virtual reality YouTube channel to see game footage, a view inside the Cavaliers’ locker room and the organization’s practice facility.
“What we learned in the VR process has really allowed us to evolve both our production and approach to VR for the past year to make it much more streamlined and much more valuable from the fan experience side of things when we do bring those 360 videos or those VR videos to our fan base,” Conley said.