Using VR to create immersive, live sport viewing experiences

“Broadcasters are starting to understand VR pretty well, but are still looking to start-ups and VR industry to build the features”, Andre Lorenceau Founder and CEO at LiveLike VR told a packed room at VR & AR World in London today. “They would rather let us pioneer this sort of this stuff and then license it from us.”

However, he stressed that broadcasters and live sports companies are investing in VR as chord-cutting begins to hit their audiences. “So they are switching to OTT and mobile, but this isn’t quite giving them the audience they need, so they are looking to VR,” Lorenceau said.

The difficulty with VR live spots is that they are expensive to create and offering just 360° viewing is not enough. At present, he said, there are only a handful of players in the VR sports space, including LiveLike. One of these is NextVR, which focuses on video “and being in the experience”. The other player Lorenceau cited was Voke, which also offers video, but also has some interests in hardware.

Also, bulk of equipment is important. “It needs to be usable on site,” he said.

He pointed out that with sports, you need to be interactive and social. He cited a company called Virtually Live, which works with Formula E on a VR recreation of the live race. “The experience is focused on the heavier tethered rigs, but they recreate the race,” he added, which allows users total immersion in the experience. He says that while this works well for Formula E, “for football, it loses some of the detail”.

“LiveLike is somewhat of a half-way house,” he explains. “We create lounge-like experiences. This allows us to shoot with cheaper rigs, but gives us a ton of interactivity.”

He also advised broadcasters to make sure any VR they offer works on mobile and tablet, so that they can reach bigger audiences.

He added: “You can then build a ton of stuff in VR, from social to gamification. Ultimately this is what broadcast needs right now. To get broadcasters to accept VR you have to offer end-to-end workflow and monetization opportunities, or the support in the industry isn’t going to be enough to support these experiences.”

Virtual Reality – Niche or Reality?

FutureSource Consulting analyst Michael Boreham told attendees at VRAR World in London today that we have finally entered an age where VR can become a commercial reality as the hardware and, more importantly, cost had reached a tipping point.

However,Boreham told the audience in his session on Virtual Reality – Niche or Reality that “content is a bit further away, we are still in experiment mode”.

He said that thanks to the recent launches in gaming VR, “games are a bit closer than TV. But there is a lot of experimentation in broadcast”.

Boreham explained that one of the major challenges to the true uptake of VR was monetisation. “It is not cheap to produce this content. Often content is quite short, so getting consumers to pay is difficult.”

“From a consumer point of view, it is more accessible”, he added. “The PS4 and others have helped here. There’s is a lot to be done to raise awareness. But is there an appetite. There is a challenge there in terms of raising appetite.”

Another factor, he told the audience, was awareness. FutureSource research found that only 7% of UK consumers had tried VR, compared with 5% and 4% respectively in Germany and France. In the US, the figure stood at 8% in US.

“Many people, while aware of VR haven’t experienced a truly great VR experience yet,” he said. However, Boreham pointed out that the number of 19 to 35-year-olds that had tried VR was double the average.

“Retail channel is key here, to raise awareness,” he added, especially with the number of consumer releases in gaming. “The console space is beginning to get really interesting,” he said.

FutureSource believes that by 2020 total content revenue will be in excess of USD$6bn worldwide. This will be split 24% to video and 76% games. The gaming VR market, though, at US$4.8bn, is still only 2.5% of the overall gaming market.

“The idea of video VR is an excellent concept, but not all of it works. You have to remember that it is not an extension of traditional TV and broadcast,” he warned. “We have to throw away 100 years of technique. VR is totally different.”

Boreham said that commercials were not a bad use case, as the short timescale “will get over the burden of having to wear a headset for a longer period of time”.

In terms of video VR content, “movies and news are a nice thought, but difficult,” he explained. “Sport is where a lot of trials are going on.”

“VR works better with smaller sports, like boxing or tennis matches, where you can get the best seat in the house. But it doesn’t work so well with big stadium sports because of an inability to zoom,” he continued.
The duration of sports is difficult too, he said. “The average time for headset wearing in sports is 10 minutes, so 45 minutes for a football match is difficult to see at the moment,” he added.

Boreham believes that in the shorter term pay-per-view will be the preferred way to monetise VR in sports, echoing the early days of satellite TV. “In the short-term, it will be PPV around key boxing matches or other sporting events that we tap into in that basis”.

He also suggested that major TV or movie franchises might also tap into VR. “This could include big studios or tie-in to gaming, as we’ve seen with Fantastic Beasts,” he explained. “It might be bundled, so it might be VR companion piece to our BluRay of a film.”

The watershed for TV will be 2018, according to FutureSource, when the technology and take-up will be large enough.

Finally, he pointed out the need to restrict the availability of good and free VR. “While this gets the message out there, we have to be ver very careful. There is a tipping point between free and paid for,” he said.