How Virtual Reality is Changing Sports Broadcasting

Lessons and trials with Tom Impallomeni, CEO of Virtually Live

Tom Impallomeni

Virtually Live democratizes the world: Through the platform, fans can virtually attend, and experience, live sports games and events from anywhere in the world.

It is an immersive technology which sits between attending a live game or event and watching it on TV. Their patented media system and method takes 3D real time positional tracking data and transposes it into a virtual venue, enabling fans to pick any viewing position and to watch the game or event live, in 3D, whilst interacting with fellow fans.

Beyond the Headset sat down with Tom Impallomeni, CEO of Virtually Live and avid sports fan in order to understand what his motivations, challenges and experiences have been building a company in a growing industry. Taking on cable broadcasters and moving sports broadcasting forward.

Virtually Live Process Explained

Why the VR Scene is Like The Social Media Scene in 2006

BTH: What challenges do you face as a VR centric company?

TI: Any business working in VR knows that it’s a very nascent market. Prior to working in VR, from 2005–09 I worked for a location based startup in the social media space, and that was in the early days of social networking where our rivals at the time were companies like Facebook, Friendster and Myspace. A lot of companies that have subsequently diminished or died and of course, there have been some massive winners.

But, what was interesting working in the social media space around that time was that it represented a real blue ocean opportunity; no one knew the rules of the game. The Like button that people take for granted now, and the seamless tagging of your friends in photos, all these types of technologies, had yet to be created and executed well. Startups were also you were limited by hardware — it wasn’t as though everyone owned smartphones with GPS. The idea of actually pulling out your phone and being able to see your position and navigate to another place, using your phone, seemed super futuristic; everyone still had TomToms.

“And that’s where I see that there are a lot of similarities with the current state of VR”

And that’s where I see a lot of similarities with the current state of the VR market; no one really knows which headset is going to be the eventual category winner. Initial signs indicate that the HTC Vive is doing very well and that Oculus has some catching up to do, at least in the minds of VR developers. But these are early days. The Playstation VR is to be released in October, and should help add momentum to the market. There are arguments as to whether VR startups should focus on tethered (gamer) headsets o on Mobile VR. And startups must choose whether to ship on one or multiple devices. There are a broad selection of trade-offs.

So what all this means for companies like us is that we have to invest a lot of money adapting our product for each different headset and all the specifics of those platforms. Eventually, there will be some sort of unifying means of delivery, but for now, it’s somewhat tricky.

“Adapting our product for each different headset”

We’re working with early stage technology, and part of the problem of working with this hardware is that, in terms of users, the market is at a very early stage. For many tethered headsets, user numbers are in the hundreds of thousands or early millions, whereas in two or three years’ time, you’ll probably see a hundred million VR users on more stable, established technology platforms.

For VR startups, what this means is that you can’t monetize VR properties at mass scale right now. Or rather, to monetize VR at mass scale right now, you need to take what you’ve built and put it on Facebook in a 360 video, or or YouTube VR. (we’ll discuss this here: link)

“In two or three years’ time, you’ll probably have a hundred million VR users using more stable technology”

So for a VR company to grow and thrive, you’re essentially needing to operate on the proviso that you’re not going to make substantial revenue from your core products in the next year or two. You need to take a long term view and innovate in an environment. This essentially requires you to raise enough money to get through the first couple of years of VR adoption and think long-term.

The problem with this is that it makes it very hard for bootstrappers. We’re fortunate we have very supportive shareholders, and we work with cutting edge technology businesses but we wouldn’t be able to do this as a purely bootstrapped business. It would be very difficult to make the economics of it work. It’s a challenge, but it’s not very different from the social media scene. Back in 2005–06, no one had really figured out the revenue models for those sites. If you look at Facebook now, it’s quarterly revenues are in the billions but in 2005–06, it was completely free and no one knew how to make any money. Facebook raised hundreds of millions of dollars figuring this out and getting to scale.

The Virtually Live Process Explained

Beyond the Headset (BTH):When you include or cover a Formula E race or a Soccer game what does it require you guys to do on the technical side of things?

Tom Impallomeni (TI): In motor racing, we require a real time positional data stream, so we use telemetry from motor racing cars. This telemetry tracks 180 different measurements in real time. We use raw data feed for a number of those measurements and we reconstruct the race real time and then we merge it with broadcast footage alongside it. We also create a full-scale virtual environment so that, to the user, it feels real. Then we add social interaction. We’ve built a social platform that enables people to watch together in real time.

For soccer, we use a different kind of tracking. Whilst we don’t have such accurate data for players and cars, there are ever-improving technologies for optical tracking, using 6 up to 18 cameras in a stadium to output three dimensional positional data. Eventually this will enable even better movement tracking, such as skeletal movements. We also use wearable technologies, such as RFID (radio frequency identification) and GPS trackers, worn by the players in-game. For example, wearable tracking devices are worn by NFL players. Players have two chips, made by Zebra Technologies, one in each shoulder pad and this gives positional data around the field in three dimensions. Wilson is also testing positional tracking in their match balls, which will hopefully remove the debate around fine decisions on 4th down.

All of these advances and implementations of technology play in our favour — helping enhance our experiences for fans.

BTH: Will you be able to broadcast events live? Or is it all post production?

TI: We broadcast live (at the moment, mainly on a closed beta basis) and we can also reproduce games so you can watch them from any position; this is valuable for analysis post game. But really, if you’re creating a social sporting experience in VR, it’s about watching live — and really bringing people together. People want to watch the game live. Replayed sports are interesting, and valuable for analysis, but they’re not our core focus.

Formula E and Virtually Live

BTH: Can you talk a little bit about the sport aspect of things?

TI: We’ve partnered with Formula E for over a year now. Our first test was in Putrajaya (Malaysia) in November 2015. The first season was very much a test season and we look forward to moving towards rollout this season. From our testing, feedback from fans has been excellent and we hope racing fans will love it. For me, a particular point of interest is that it will get people interested in Formula E who wouldn’t otherwise know about the competition — it’s a tremendous form of racing.

Formula 1 remains the most popular global motorsport, but many fans believe that, whilst it still draws arguably the world’s best drivers, the competition between manufacturers of cars seems sometimes more important than the skill of individual drivers because you’re essentially competing with different types of cars that are optimized differently. In Formula E, it’s real nose-to-tail racing with very similar cars (the differences amount primarily to variances in the powertrains) so it’s a really fantastic spectator event with lots of overtaking. Formula E has been a fantastic partner for us — we both have ambitions to improve our respective fields for fans.

And what we’re doing for Soccer is also really transformative. Why limit yourself to sitting on the side of the field and watching a game in the stands when you can be on the field and watch the game go on around you, live? You can watch from the perspective of a key player. We found that really resonates with people, particularly with those that have experience in playing the game; to actually be able to watch the game unfold around you is really powerful. We’re hopeful that this year we’re going to see the launch, and early adoption of the technologies that we’ve been building.

I would say that it’s a process of constant improvement. We’re breaking new ground and constantly learning about, and improving around, the limitations of the tracking data that we work with. We have productive partnerships with tracking system companies. The tracking methodologies and devices were usually not designed to create a Virtual Reality experience. They were designed to do other things, like creating heat maps of player movements or to give broadcasters information about possession statistics. In some ways, we’re changing the thinking of some of those data suppliers and the broadcasters as well.

As a sports fan, it’s a really exciting business to be involved in but I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface of the potential of what we can do.

BTH: What has the reception been like from existing sports broadcasters?

TI: It’s been great. Broadcasters are in an interesting place as there’s a general move by subscribers towards cord cutting, which causes problems to traditional cable TV operators. The whole broadcast market is changing; we’re seeing social media players like Twitter buying sports rights and broadcasting live. There are companies partnering with Facebook to live stream games on platforms such as Grabyo. There are OTT (over the top) opportunities that have previously not been available. So for clubs and leagues, it’s possible to go direct to the customer thereby cutting out the broadcasters. And this is changing the landscape fundamendally. People are generally moving away from cable bundles to a more a-la carte offerings and that’s having an effect on sport broadcasters’ revenues. Broadcasters are thus looking to innovate in the interest of retaining users — we see ourselves as complementary to Broadcasters — a new media that complements their offering.

BTH: What advice do you have for those that are joining the VR scene?

TI: Anticipate that you’re probably not going to make any significant revenue for a couple of years. Plan accordingly, expect that you will need to raise money, expect that if you really want to make transformative technology, you’re going to have to fund that two year revenue gap. But I would say go for it, because it’s such a fantastic market to be in. It’s a bit like the beginning of social media all over again. Why would you not want to try and get involved in such an exciting blue ocean opportunity? Definitely my advice would be to build products and platforms with strategic long term value. Don’t just go hunting for short term revenues because you’ll miss those big opportunities. So plan accordingly, raise money, and see how you can create those really compelling experiences. Think long term.