Virtual reality basketball could be future of sports broadcasting – San Francisco Chronicle

Two years ago, virtual reality startup NextVR privately demonstrated the future of sports broadcasting with one 360-degree camera placed courtside at a Golden State Warriors game in Oakland.

On Tuesday night, NextVR returned to Oracle Arena, this time with seven cameras, about 30 crew members, a full-scale TV production truck and three announcers presenting the Warriors-Minnesota Timberwolves game in virtual reality to a relatively small but paying audience of international basketball fans.

And the telecast came a day after the NCAA mens basketball championship was also broadcast in virtual reality using similar technology provided by Intel of Santa Clara.

The vast majority of basketball fans still watched the regular TV broadcasts and were probably unaware that these immersive, three-dimensional experiences were even available, a sign of how the VR industry is still trying to get off the ground and find an audience. However, this weeks back-to-back events showed how much progress live VR sports has made.

In five years, our goal is to produce this content so realistically that youll have a hard time distinguishing it from actually sitting in one of these seats, NextVR co-founder David Cole said as he showed off his companys cameras before the Warriors game.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, said Sankar Jay Jayaram, CEO of VR technology firm Voke, which Intel bought in November.

Live sports could be key to getting people hooked on virtual reality. A survey taken last year by Greenlight Insights, a San Francisco firm which researches virtual and augmented reality, showed that 39 percent of sports fans were very interested in watching live VR sports.

Even though it will be four to five years before live VR broadcasts develop into a major market, streaming big events live in VR will be central to the non-(video)game VR experience, Greenlight analyst Alexis Macklin said.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Virtual reality cameras capture Stephen Currys tunnel shot before the Warriors-Timberwolves game.

Virtual reality cameras capture Stephen Currys tunnel shot before the Warriors-Timberwolves game.

Don Henderson (top) and Matt Klamm set up vir tual reality cameras on basket stanchions at Oracle.

Don Henderson (top) and Matt Klamm set up vir tual reality cameras on basket stanchions at Oracle.

Virtual reality basketball could be future of sports broadcasting

For now, the industry faces the classic chicken-and-egg dilemma, said Geoff Blaber, vice president of research for CCS Insight. It needs compelling content to attract users, but content investment is slow until theres a critical mass of users.

So this weeks virtual basketball telecasts were a hugely important step to proving the concept, he said.

Intel, CBS Sports, Turner Sports and the NCAA teamed up to broadcast six March Madness playoff games in VR, three of them from San Joses SAP Center and the three Final Four games from Phoenix Saturday and Monday. Only owners of Samsungs Gear VR headset, which also requires a newer-model Samsung smartphone, could view them. That limits the audience to those people who own the 5 million Gear VR headsets Samsung has sold worldwide.

For $2.99 per game, or $7.99 for all six games, viewers could see the action almost as if theyd paid hundreds of dollars for courtside seats. The feed included shots from seven cameras, each with 12 lenses, placed next to the court and in the arena. A production crew chose shots based on the game action, although viewers could also select their own views. And for the first time, the VR broadcast had its own three-person announcing team.

Jayaram and his wife, Uma Jayaram, a Voke co-founder, began working on the technology 18 years ago. He said he did not know how many viewers tuned into the VR stream. (Nielsen said the regular broadcast of the North Carolina-Gonzaga championship game averaged 23 million viewers.)

But Jayaram, now chief technology officer of Intel Sports Group, said there were enough viewers for the six games to show that there is interest in the medium, especially since this was the first time the show wasnt on for free.

At some point, the rubber has to meet the road, and you want to know we are creating an experience that is good enough that fans would pay for it, he said.

One paying customer was Josh Boggess of Athens, Tenn., who said he loved the experience.

The option of switching to different cameras helped him feel like Im standing in the crowd and can see all the details, including the big plays, Boggess said via text message.

Boggess said the only downside was the poorer video quality, compared with a 4K TV, but he expects that the VR quality will improve with time. Once that happens, its going to be the future of television viewing, he said.

Tuesday nights Warriors game was one of 25 NBA games to be broadcast this season in VR as part of NextVRs deal with the league. Warriors co-owner Peter Guber is an investor in the Newport Beach (Orange County) company, which made history by broadcasting the teams 2015-16 season opener in virtual reality. NextVR also produced a VR video that helped to lure star free agent Kevin Durant to the team this season.

To access the telecasts, however, viewers need a Gear VR and a subscription to NBA League Pass, a regular-season TV package of games that cost $199 at the start of the season and now costs $6.99 per game. The NBA declined to say how many viewers are watching the VR telecasts, which will not include the playoffs.

NextVR produces the show, which also includes replays and graphics. During a tour of the production truck, the NextVR crew was busy editing a clip of Warriors star Stephen Currys pregame warm-ups to show at halftime.

Most of the crew comes from traditional sports television, and they are still learning how to adapt to a medium that doesnt rely on closeup shots and constant cutaways to focus the viewers attention. Instead, the director switches between shots from the two cameras stationed on the basket stanchions or from a camera on the scorers table in the center.

There are also no commercials, so during timeouts, were staying with the experience, said Josh Earl, a coordinating producer. We never stop the entertainment value. We just keep pumping it through. When the play stops, you have time to take a deep breath and look around the arena, check out the JumboTron, watch the dancers, all kinds of glances you wouldnt normally do during a broadcast.

Although Cole said all major sports leagues are showing interest in VR, theres one live sport that has already become a hit.

Monster trucks are hugely popular, he said. We certainly wouldnt have guessed it, but were doubling down on monster trucks because its big.

Benny Evangelista is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: bevangelista@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChronicleBenny

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Virtual reality basketball could be future of sports broadcasting - San Francisco Chronicle