Skip to main content

Fox Sports just partnered up with a VR company, plans to broadcast live sports in VR

nascar fox sports virtual reality five years daytona 500 super bowl nextvr
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Earlier today, Fox Sports and live-action virtual reality company NextVR announced a five year partnership to broadcast live sports in virtual reality. The partnership will live broadcast racing’s biggest event –the infamous Daytona 500– in virtual reality for the first time ever.

For this week’s Daytona 500 race, fans will be able to view the race from the starting line, the pit as crews are changing tires and a host of never before seen angles. The race will be televised at 1 PM EST on FOX and fans who wish to watch in virtual reality can do so on the NextVR app via the Samsung Galaxy VR.

Fox Sports began testing taking its audience into the virtual world with NextVR in March 2015 when the VR company live streamed last year’s Auto Club 400 NASCAR race in Fontana, California for Fox Sports executives and producers. The press release for the announcement promises that future VR programming will appear on the Fox Sports tab in the NextVR app, which could mean big things for virtual reality.

Super Bowl 51 in 2017 and Super Bowl 54 in 2020 will be broadcasted live by Fox during the multi-year deal with NextVR, which is expected to stretch until 2021. While no plans to live broadcast Super Bowl 51 in VR have been announced, but NextVR did set up a booth at NFL Experience (an interactive theme park set up for the public to use in California) during the week of Super Bowl 50. Fans who attended the booth were able to watch three football games in virtual reality.

NextVR co-founder DJ Roller touted the different camera angles fans would be able to experience to CNBC prior to Super Bowl 50. “One minute you’re sitting at the 50-yard line, the next minute you may decide to go stand in the end zone or on the line of scrimmage.” NextVR also live broadcasted the Golden State Warriors vs the New Orleans Pelicans in virtual reality in last October.  At this rate, it won’t be long before you’re watching the biggest football game of the year from the comfort of the 50 yard line.

Editors' Recommendations

Keith Nelson Jr.
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Keith Nelson Jr is a music/tech journalist making big pictures by connecting dots. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY he…
How to delete or hide chats in Microsoft Teams
Running Microsoft Teams on the Galaxy Tab S8.

Microsoft Teams is a terrific workplace platform for keeping the camaraderie strong. Featuring collaborative messaging, video conferencing, and file-sharing tools, it’s your one-stop-shop for in-office, hybrid and at-home workers alike. But anyone with a long history of using Teams will tell you how clogged up your message stockpile can get. Fortunately, deleting and hiding these exchanges is relatively easy to do, and we’ve put together this guide to help.

Read more
Why Llama 3 is changing everything in the world of AI
Meta AI on mobile and desktop web interface.

In the world of AI, you've no doubt heard about what OpenAI and Google have been up to. And now, Meta's Llama LLM (large language model) is becoming an increasingly important player in the game, especially with its open-source nature. Meta recently made a big splash with the launch of its Llama 3 AI model, and it's shaken up the field dramatically.

The reasons why are multiple and varied. It's free to use, it has a wide user base, and yes, it's open source, to name but a few. Here's why Llama 3 is taking the AI industry by storm and may shape its future for some time to come.
Llama 3 is really good
We can debate until the cows come home about how useful AIs like ChatGPT and Llama 3 are in the real world -- they're not bad at teaching you board game rules -- but the few benchmarks we have for how capable these AI are give Llama 3 a distinct advantage.

Read more
How to delete messages on your Mac
A MacBook and iPhone in shadow on a surface.

Apple likes to make things easy for its iPhone, iPad, and macOS devotees. When signed in with the same Apple ID on more than one of these devices, you’ll be able to sync your messages from one Apple product to the next. This means when you get a text on your iPhone, you’ll be able to pull it up through the Messages app on your Mac desktop.

Read more