As Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh refused to sign the host contract for the Boston 2024 Olympic bid today, the U.S. Olympic Committee will have to scramble to either get Walsh on their side or pick another city.
If this U.S. bid fails for 2024, there may still be a way for Americans to sit in the crowd at the Olympics without traveling halfway across the world.
Virtual reality experts believe that by 2024, the Olympics could be broadcast in virtual reality, according to The Boston Globe.
But, that estimate may in fact be giving virtual reality more time than it actually needs. The Olympic Broadcasting Services unit is very interested in virtual reality, foregoing attempting to broadcast any of the Rio de Janeiro 2016 summer games in 4K Ultra HD so that they can focus on virtual reality broadcasting. Rio 2016 will be a test for virtual reality, where highlights and limited broadcasting will be available for use with virtual reality headsets.
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President of Fox Home Entertainment Mike Dunn even projected that virtual reality will go mainstream by 2017, with 25 million households possessing the technology at that period in time.
This is not entirely unfeasible, seeing as NextVR and FOX Sports already broadcast this year’s U.S. Open in virtual reality. But, Olympic broadcasters will need to adapt those 360-degree cameras to a stadium setting. Derek Belch of STRIVR Labs, a virtual reality system designed to train football players, envisions a scenario where small cameras can be sunk into the finish line or other key places of action.
As with most aspects of virtual reality, test runs and ever increasing technology will be the final indicator of how events are broadcast.
What is for certain is that the Olympics are the ideal sporting ground for virtual reality. The short duration of individual events will help with sensory fatigue that comes as a result of being immersed in virtual reality for too long. As well, individual sports are the easiest to broadcast in virtual reality.
Japanese public broadcaster NHK is gearing up to broadcast their Tokyo 2020 summer games in emerging 8K, or Super Hi-Vision, which is the next step after 4K. But, they may be wasting their time with the fast moving industry that is virtual reality.