College football fans will be able to catch the action of a Notre Dame and Michigan State game in virtual reality next week from the sweeping views of the FOX Sports Skycam.
On Sept. 23, FOX Sports will debut a new social VR experience that will mark the first time it has unlocked the 360-degree views of the floating Skycam for fans to view in virtual reality.
The experience, available for free through the FOX Sports VR app, will enable viewers to sit in a virtual social setting where they can verbally communicate and interact with other viewers’ avatars designed by LiveLike while watching the game. Users can either be matched up with friends who also have the app or randomly partnered with a stranger with the option to turn off the social aspect of the game-watching experience at any time.
This isn’t the first time FOX Sports has offered a social VR experience for live games. Earlier this summer, it first experimented with this kind of game watching during the Gold Cup soccer tournament.
However, NCAA Football was viewed as a natural next step since it has attracted the most usage among FOX Sports’ broader virtual reality efforts, and the Skycam view is a brand new addition, a spokesperson said.
Viewers this go around will have access to pre-game festivities, team warm-ups, halftime band performances and post-game celebrations live through multiple high-resolution camera angles, including from the Skycam stream. Viewers can manually jump between views or select an automated cut that chooses the best camera angles for live game action.
The social VR initiative is the latest effort by FOX Sports to experiment with ways to enhance the game-watching experience for fans and increase advertising revenues by allowing marketers to target specific demographics.
FOX, which secured a sponsorship for the experience from Wendy’s (Buffalo Wild Wings sponsored the Gold Cup one), said it is hoping the experience gives viewers a “fresh perspective” and ad sales teams “more targeted sports integrations.”
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While the concept is sure to draw interest, it’s too early in this burgeoning adoption of social VR to determine how offerings such as these that allow people to watch sports live in virtual reality will succeed in the long run.
Sports tend to foster loyal fan bases that thrive off human input and interaction. This social VR experience is an attempt to do that through avatars, but there’s a noticeable difference in consuming sports this way versus in person, at a bar or at home with family and friends.
NextVR is another company that has been experimenting with live-action VR experiences, having partnered this past season with the NBA to deliver regularly scheduled broadcasts of live games in virtual reality and automated highlights in virtual reality during the NBA Finals.
In July, NextVR executive chairman Brad Allen touted the success of the company’s VR efforts when he shared some information about viewership numbers with SportTechie.
At the time, he said the San Antonio Spurs vs. Sacramento Kings game in October 2016 saw fans average seven or eight minutes watching the action through a virtual reality headset, a number that had grown to 45 minutes by the final week of the regular NBA season.
The ability to watch an NBA game in VR with friends who aren’t in the same room like the one provided by FOX Sports would be coming “soon,” he said, because Next VR was receiving feedback from users demanding to watch sports in a more social and in a less isolating environment.