Gatorade has come up with a new way to entertain while teaching athletes about proper hydration. The beverage company unveiled its new ‘Beat The Blitz’ VR game featuring former NFL All-Pro and Super Bowl champion, Peyton Manning.
“I look a little younger in 3D,” quipped Manning in a recently released Gatorade video.
‘Beat The Blitz’ has you taking advice from Manning while throwing passes at targets and avoiding would-be tacklers. The game was developed by ZeroCode along with help from The Mill, OMD and VML. It was made to incorporate real-time tracking so it authentically simulates the experience of throwing a football.
More than finding out whether or not you’re a competent passer, ‘Beat The Blitz’ shows you what happens to an athlete once dehydration sets in. As you’re playing, a grouping of six bottles will empty as time continues to expire. As you get down to the last bottle, your vision becomes impaired and other symptoms manifest themselves.
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Available for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, ‘Beat The Blitz’ debuted at SXSW and the NFL Combine in Indianapolis. Sam Darnold, the projected top pick out of USC, even gave it a try:
Sam Darnold taking part in Gatorade Beat the Blitz event. pic.twitter.com/ur8CEoVZxQ
— Paul Schwartz (@NYPost_Schwartz) March 3, 2018
SportTechie Takeaway:
This is a light-hearted activation, but VR continues to play a big role in real football development. Teddy Bridgewater — now a member of the New York Jets — partially attributed his speedy recovery from a devastating injury to help from VR.
To name a few of the most recent training-based VR-related announcements from the sports world: The U.S. Ski team trained for the Pyeongchang Olympics using VR, the University of Syracuse football team announced that it will use VR for training and fan engagement, and the official authority for German soccer announced a partnership with a VR company for player training and analysis.
Through its activation, Gatorade is encouraging young athletes to examine the importance of hydration on athletic performance. Science-based endeavors like this have value to Gatorade, for obvious reasons. The company has invested in a sports science facility in Bradenton, Florida and previously released a smart bottle to monitor hydration. Gatorade is not the only player in this space: last year researchers at Purdue University developed a skin patch to monitor athlete hydration.