SVG Sit-Down: NBA's Teddy Kaplan on the Metaverse and the Future of Fandom NBA Lane in Meta's Horizon World is intended to allow fans to congregate and interact By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Thursday, January 26, 2023 - 9:39 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The NBA and Meta expanded their relationship around VR this week, and the deal is about more than just expanding the Metaverse: it's about learning what NBA fans want out of this new form of engagement and also what hard-core Metaverse users want from the NBA. Teddy Kaplan, associate VP, new media partner management lead, NBA, sat down with SVG to discuss the new deal and what it means not only to the NBA but to everyone.
The NBA's Teddy Kaplan: The Metaverse is one of many things we are doing to make our game more appealing to fans around the world.
Meta Horizon World is a free app that can be experienced on a Meta Quest headset. Last year, the NBA launched NBA Lane in Horizon World, offering a free-throw shootout, low-gravity dunk contest, and more. This new team adds the NBA Arena experience, featuring live NBA League Pass games in virtual reality throughout the season. You just extended your work with Meta under a new multi-year agreement. How will this new deal take things to a new level?
We've been broadcasting VR games on Oculus since 2017, and this deal expands that by establishing a world in the Horizon World space, which will be evergreen. Last year, around the time the playoffs started, we launched our NBA Lane in Horizon World, and it ran through the end of June. Now we're making it evergreen and the hub for NBA fans to congregate, gather, and interact with other NBA fans and games.
From a broadcast perspective, we're expanding our coverage schedule and expanding from 26 to 52 games in Horizon World. We are also experimenting with some new formats - 47 of those will be the League Pass 2D broadcast - but in an immersive space so fans can meet in the world and talk about it and walk around it. Five games will be traditional VR broadcast with dedicated cameras and announce teams.
What do you see as the potential around the Metaverse?
We want to bring our games and express our games in new ways and in new avenues, as we have done with volumetric capture or alternate broadcasts on our app. The Metaverse is one of many things we are doing to make our game more appealing to fans around the world.
Certainly, we're aware and excited about the appeal of the Metaverse to younger fans who have a headset and use that as their entry into this world. That's one of the reasons we're experimenting and bringing regular linear games into the Metaverse. We're interested to find out what appeals and what people want. Do they want the new angles of a dedicated VR production, or is it the interaction and ability to meet up with their friends living somewhere else and watching a game standing next to them? And then there are the interactive games and all the other elements, and those get people to stay during the 22 hours a day when there isn't an NBA game.
But I see this as an evolution of the fan experience. If you lived in Paris and wanted to get together with fans of your favorite team, you would search to find the best bar to watch the game. This is the next step: you can meet up with like-minded fans and watch the game with people who have the same interest and love of the game.
The biggest complaint people used to have about VR was that it was anti-social when you put the headset on and were secluded from the world. Now it's extremely social, and the reason users will want to stay in the headset is to see their friends or meet new people.
The NBA now has a permanent home in the Metaverse, designed to give NBA fans a new way to engage with the league, its broadcasts, and each other.
Do you think it's important for other leagues and everybody to get involved with the Metaverse, so everyone gives it a collective lift?
Our fans are tech-savvy and first adopters, and we see these partnerships as a way to establish a reputation and a position in the space. Someone who has a VR headset will experience the NBA and say it's amazing, and they will wish their other favorite leagues or brands were in the Metaverse.
What does Meta bring to the table?
They've been amazing through this process, and it's truly iterative as we look to them to tell us what works in Horizon World and what doesn't. We're innovation partners and constantly thinking about what we can do to make the experience better for our fans. It's one of those relationships where we are aligned and things fall into place. Their work is incredible. I clearly have a bias, but the work they have done is unparalleled.
In the NBA Lane project last year, for example, we saw that fans would be fixated watching the top 10 highlights and talking to each other. When we saw that reaction with highlights, we wanted to see what the reaction would be like with a live game.
We're constantly trying out new formats to figure what works. I think back to the first VR experience I had, which was a preseason game in Brazil with the camera at midcourt. It was really cool, but then it felt like you were watching a tennis match, and we realized people like having a director switching cameras and telling them where to look.
So we've evolved every year and even every month. This is just the next step.
Tell us a bit about how the Metaverse comes together technically.
Luckily for everyone who is using it, I don't have to be involved in actually creating the code and programming: we have smarter people who can do that. But we do have a team, and Meta has a team building out this world from soup to nuts. They're amazingly talented, and we're building off what the Meta
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
13/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
YES Network and The Gotham Sports App will air seven Athletes Unlimited Softball...
12/06/2026
The United Football League will host its FAST Innovation Suite at the 2026 United Bowl presented by Credit One Bank on Saturday, June 13 at 3:00 p.m. ET at Audi...
12/06/2026
PTZOptics and LayerJot will present live demonstrations at InfoComm 2026 showing how natural-language AI prompting, robotic camera control, and on-device comput...
12/06/2026
MultiDyne Video and Fiber Optic Systems will exhibit at InfoComm 2026, featuring...
12/06/2026
Ateme has announced that Eurovision Services is using Ateme's software-based frame-rate conversion technology for international live event workflows. The de...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin and Simplestream have announced a partnership with Xperi to simplify the launch of OTT streaming services on TiVo OS smart TVs and devices. The collabo...
12/06/2026
Net Insight has announced that a multinational technology company is deploying a...
12/06/2026
MLB Players Inc., the business arm of the MLB Players Association, has announced a partnership with Athletes First to develop and sell brand partnerships across...
12/06/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D) and VuWall have announced the CommandKeyboard-Advanc...
12/06/2026
Comcast Smart Solutions announces a new smart technology deployment with Major L...
12/06/2026
Elevation Worship completed the initial leg of its Elevation Nights 2026 tour ...
12/06/2026
AJA Video Systems has announced KONA IP25 support for Colorfront Transkoder and ...
12/06/2026
Audinate Group Limited (ASX: AD8) will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth C7321, Ce...
12/06/2026
Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould has announced the appointment of Scott Adametz as Chief Technology Officer. The Pac-12 describes the hire as the first CTO appo...
12/06/2026
Grass Valley has announced AMPP Edge Live, a production system combining Grass Valley hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell GPU acceleration, and AMPP OS in a single platf...
12/06/2026
At one time a trailblazer with the launch of the Longhorn Network, the Universit...
12/06/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
12/06/2026
Chyron has announced PAINT 10.4, an update to its illustrated replay and sports ...
12/06/2026
SVP, Production Mark Gross: With the new schedule, with not having every Sunday night, it's given us an opportunity to take a step back and reimagine what ...
12/06/2026
For Televisa Technical Engineering Manager Roberto N nez Ibarra and the small team of 12 technicians and two production personnel at the IBC things are already ...
12/06/2026
Simple Steps to Better Acoustics - Taming The Small Room
Most of us mix in spare rooms and small spaces, where the acoustics fight us at every turn. At Gear...
12/06/2026
Latest addition expands vintage-inspired effects palette
Meris' Ottobit pedal range draws its inspiration from vintage gaming consoles, and the latest a...
12/06/2026
Soundbox-based chamber strings series expanded
Sonora Cinematic have just announced the launch of the second instalment in their Soundbox-based chamber stri...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
AJA Announces KONA IP25 Integration with Colorfront Software
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Collaboration enables uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110 I/O ...
12/06/2026
URSA Cine 12K LF Used to Create Visuals for STUTS' K-Arena Concert
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Organic visuals projected on a giant scre...
12/06/2026
MTI FILM Acquires Mango New Edit, Expanding its Global Post-Production Services ...
12/06/2026
AI Point Tracking Speeds Up Complex VFX Tracks in Mocha Pro
Jessie Electa Petrov June 12, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic point trac...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, has partnered with Simplestream, a provider of OTT and broadcast solutions, and technology provider Xperi, to...
12/06/2026
Leostream Corporation, creator of the world-leading Leostream Remote Desktop Access Platform, today announced Jigsaw24, a leading B2B IT solutions provider wit...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
How Aussie indie games and screen are levelling up with IP 11 June 2026
Ari Harrison, Pro Jank Footy
Head of Games Joey Egger and Ari Harrison of Umbrella sha...
12/06/2026
AgentPerf from Artificial Analysis, the industry's first agentic AI benchmark, gives developers, enterprises and infrastructure providers a clear way to com...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils First-Look Images from Villaflor, Santiago Mitre's New Film
Entertainment
12 June 2026
GlobalArgentina
Link copied to ...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Cross the Boundaries of the Real World into the Spirit Realm i...
12/06/2026
With John Daro, DI Colourist at Warner Bros. Water Tower Color Tuesday 23 June, 10am-1pm or 3-6pm
Restar Corporation
Tokyo
Register here
John Daro is the ...
12/06/2026
Meet The Grumpy Onion Ireland's newest online sensation, all he wants is to ...
12/06/2026
RT stays Up All Night with brand new daily 2026 FIFA World Cup Vodcast
Adding to the fun around 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament, RT has launched a brand new d...
SVG Sit-Down: NBA's Teddy Kaplan on the Metaverse and the Future of Fandom NBA Lane in Meta's Horizon World is intended to allow fans to congregate and interact By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
