Instead of watching Pekka Rinne via a 2D linear experience or through short snippets on social, why not be able to journey alongside the Nashville Predators netminder as he enters Bridgestone Arena, walks through the player tunnel, suits up and takes the ice?
Wes Burtner described the “A Day in the Life” virtual storytelling as a way to provide some behind-the-scenes content to fans that they normally wouldn’t have access to.
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“Some of those places are the holy grail, the gold mine, for fans,” said Burtner, who is a co-founder of digital media agency startup VHERE with veteran sports business executive Andy Dolich.
A few years ago, Burtner said he and Dolich had originally discussed the idea of a virtual season ticket before the virtual reality discussion even entered the sports world. Now, the idea of virtual sports tickets is slowly becoming more visible.
Still, from talking to their network and having conversations with prospective teams, Burtner and Dolich quickly realized that there wasn’t enough interest or buy-in quite yet.
“Some people were starting to do it on their own, so we put that on the back burner,” he added.
After Dolich saw a virtual reality demonstration in 2015, he and Burtner started to engage with former Nashville Predators President Jeff Cogan during last season about how they could possibly work with the team on a virtual project to further engage fans. Following six months of exchanging emails with Chief Revenue Officer Chris Junghans, the two parties decided to collaborate on a test project, according to Burtner.
VHERE partnered with Franklin, Tenn.-based virtual reality production company Actuality VR to capture content from practices and games throughout the last month of regular season, making it VHERE’s first virtual project in professional sports. The Predators initially presented the content to fans at season ticket holder renewal parties, which saw roughly 600 to 700 people.
“We got a pretty overwhelming response. Just about everyone we showed it to thought it was really cool,” said Burtner, who added that the organization also offered the virtual experience to fans on the Bridgestone Arena plaza.
A 30-second tease clip, albeit just in 360-degree video, shows Rinne arriving at the arena, putting on his pads and his fellow teammates taping up their sticks inside the locker room. Despite the piece being less than three minutes, Burtner said that if the Predators were to engage with a sponsor for the next iteration, an even shorter experience might be more feasibly in order to funnel more people through the activation.
Mascot footage, individual player content and even putting fans virtually on team road trips are all potential future ideas as Burtner and the Predators continue the conversation heading into the offseason. According to Burtner, the hope is to work on future projects for the 2017-18 campaign.