A cold, windy day with a light drizzle might dampen fan attendance at live sports. But the elements also impact on-field action, and The Weather Channel is using mixed reality and a new kind of hyperrealism in its storytelling to show how.
During the 2018 NCAA football season, The Weather Channel teamed up with the SEC, which includes such big collegiate names such as Ole Miss, LSU, Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia and 2018 SEC champion Alabama, to tell stories about how the elements impacted quarterback performance on game day.
The stories, which appeared on both The Weather Channel and SEC Network television stations, as well as their respective digital properties, leveraged mixed reality and immersive graphics to show how a certain type of wind, temperature or level of precipitation might impact the way a QB passes the ball. The stories debuted the Friday before the Iron Bowl, a rivalry game between Alabama and Auburn, in the last week of the regular season.
The Weather Channel tapped into the expertise of SEC Network commentator Jordan Rogers, who played as a quarterback in the league for Vanderbilt before playing professionally in the NFL with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Miami Dolphins. Rogers would use the data accumulated by a team of meteorologists and add context via his personal experience as a quarterback while interactive graphics moved across the screen.
“We translated his expertise into this experience that literally showed what the impacts of the weather would be,” said Mike Chesterfield, director of weather presentation at The Weather Channel and one of the meteorologists on the team for the SEC deal. “We walked the viewer through these weather elements and how a quarterback could tackle them to make sure they were as successful as possible. The idea was to give the audience an inside look at thought process of what a quarterback has to deal with, how they may overcome or not overcome weather on certain days.”
According to The Weather Channel, the higher the wind, the tighter the spiral required for longer passes. A difference in just five miles per hour can impact how long the ball stays in the air, thus increasing the demand for higher spin rates when a QB aimed for a target further down the field. The worst days for the QB, according to the data, were cold and windy when the temperature affected their extremities, starting with their hands, and therefore affected how they gripped and threw the ball.
“It really comes down to not only arm strength but ability to spin the ball. The faster you spin it, the easier it is to cut through the wind,” said Chesterfield. “It could be raining cats and dogs but if the wind isn’t blowing it isn’t that hard on the QB.”
Using mixed reality, The Weather Channel would then visually display this data and show how the ball would perform based on how fast it was thrown and at what revolution rate. The platform portrayed how changes in the elements might impact how the QB passes and grips the ball, or how the ball cuts through the air.
The Weather Channel already uses this mixed reality storytelling in explainer reports about dangerous weather such as tornadoes and storm surges. But after the first season in its SEC partnership, the network is now looking at ways to expand this hyperrealism to other sports, such as golf and baseball.
“Weather impacts all outdoor sports and we love the ability to tell this story in a way that people can identify with so we’ll bring it to whatever sport we feel has a that connection to it,” said Chesterfield. “I can envision us doing things with racing: both NASCAR or even horse racing. Any outdoor sport I can see us looking at, from football and baseball to the Masters for golf.”
A longer term goal is to add weather forecasts, and run real-time prediction pieces about how impending weather might impact an approaching sporting event.
“That’s the ultimate North Star goal: having these experiences driven by actual weather data so environments will adjust in real time to current weather data or forecast weather data coming into our systems,” said Chesterfield.