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
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Scripps Research study links sleep variability with sleep apnea and hypertension How consumers' digital activity trackers could enable personalized health s...
23/12/2025
How guilas Cibae as Dominican Winter League Games Are Locally Produced for Glob...
23/12/2025
BitFire's Jim Akimchuk on Supplying Scalability and Customization in the Clo...
23/12/2025
CAMB.AI Enables European Athletics to Offer Multi-Language SupportPlan is to eventually offer translation into all languages spoken in EuropeBy Ken Kerschbaumer...
23/12/2025
Analysis: As sports media values trend negative, scarcity and quality are king By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Monday, December 22, 2025 - 14:08
Print ...
23/12/2025
ESPN, Disney, and NBA Return to the Animated Altcast Fray With Second Edition of...
23/12/2025
End the Year on a High Note and Donate to the Sports Broadcasting Fund Today! By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, December 23, 2025 - 12:25 pm
...
23/12/2025
The year is winding down, the weather outside is frightful, and it's the perfect time to escape into a story that warms the heart. For listeners looking for...
23/12/2025
A Zeus motor is hot fire tested at L3Harris' Camden, Arkansas, solid rocket ...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Lightware will exhibit several major product innovations at ISE 2026, including the new USB-C BOOSTER-V1, Google Meet. integration for various Taurus UCX models...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Taking the Stage at Carnegie Hall-On a Global Scale Boston Conservatory Orchestra students reflect on their epic concert marking the 80th session of the UN Gene...
23/12/2025
Experience the power of WO Automation for Radio's newest service, the System Effectiveness Review. Designed to help you achieve more, a System Effectiveness...
23/12/2025
23 Dec 2025
VEON's Beeline Kazakhstan and Rakuten Symphony Collaborate to A...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
How Steamy Can It Get? Single's Inferno' Season 5 Pre...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
33 Million Global Viewers on Netflix Watched Jake Paul vs. Ant...
23/12/2025
New technique lights up where drugs go in the body, cell by cell Scripps Research scientists developed a technique that maps drug binding in individual cells th...
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
The works of Plato state that when humans have an experience, some level of change occurs in their brain, which is powered by memory - specifically long-term me...
22/12/2025
Partnership integrates complementary satellite data and AI analytics to enhance security, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring solutions for global cust...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Monday 22 December 2025
Sky extends PGA TOUR partnership until 2029, as Sky Spo...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
22/12/2025
Siobh n McSweeney, Rory McIlroy, Elon Musk, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Ivan Yates and Traitor Paudie Moloney lead new characters for Callan Kicks the Year 2...
22/12/2025
Winner announced in the picturesque surroundings of Wicklow's Avondale Tower and Treetop Walk
Andrew Trimble wins the show in his first series as coach
Th...
22/12/2025
The 2025 winners have been announced today, Sunday 21 December, for Ireland's largest choral competition Choirs for Christmas hosted by RT lyric fm.
Ove...
21/12/2025
Back to All News
Legoshi and Haru's Story Reaches Its Finale: BEASTARS Fin...
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 
