VR Continues To Expand Across NBA With Turner Sports, Intel Deal Turner will live-stream about 30 VR games this season, beginning All-Star Weekend By Troy Dreier, Contributor, Streaming & Digital
Monday, November 13, 2017 - 12:23 pm
Print This Story
Story Highlights
This season, everyone can have a courtside seat. A one-year agreement between Intel, the NBA, and Turner Sports will create virtual-reality streams for many Thursday-night NBA on TNT games, as well as some of the playoffs. Viewers will be able to catch about 30 games in all, starting All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles in February.
To catch the immersive action, viewers will need a Google Daydream or Samsung Gear VR headset and the NBA on TNT VR app, which will be free to download a few weeks before the first game. However, viewers will need to authenticate their apps to view the games, so this requires a pay-TV subscription.
Turner Sports will position multiple Intel virtual-reality cameras around the court during as many 30 live VR productions of NBA games this season.
Intel is providing the VR streams much as it did for the MLB last season, positioning multiple VR cameras around the arenas. So far, Turner Sports says it will offer two views per game, one courtside and one up higher in the stands. The VR streams might have their own commentators calling the action. Although the Thursday-night schedule is available now, Turner doesn't know yet which games will stream in VR. Streams will be available to all U.S. viewers, with no blackouts.
Turner Sports doesn't think of this as an alternative view for the fans or even as a complementary experience for people watching the broadcast feeds. Instead, the effort is designed to pull in an entirely new audience.
We see it as additive; it's not cannibalizing an existing audience, says Will Funk, EVP, property marketing and corporate partnerships, Turner Sports. It's a new audience. It's additional eyeballs. Early adopters, millennials, tech-savvy consumers [are] very hard-to-reach consumers. We'll have opportunity to reach them in this environment.
Turner Sports' Will Funk: We see it as additive; it's not cannibalizing an existing audience. It's a new audience. It's additional eyeballs.
This isn't the first time Turner Sports has worked with Intel to stream in VR, but it's the most ambitious. Their VR partnership began last year during March Madness, with Intel the official VR partner of the NCAA. That experience taught Funk much about doing VR right and delivering a quality experience that feels true to the medium.
Although Intel will control the VR streaming, Tuner will work with brands to create immersive ads for viewers, and that has Funk excited about the chance to chart new territory and bring something fresh to sponsors.
We see the opportunity here to obviously be in a new space in terms of virtual reality and some pretty interesting advertising opportunities for our partners: we can actually produce native VR-branded content for our ad partners and insert that into the VR telecast where there is natural breaks, as well as have it available on-demand in addition to the live feed of the games, he explains. We're not looking to just drop a regular two-dimensional 30-second commercial into the breaks on this platform. We're going to make sure it's contextually relevant and native to the platform.
Although the medium is new and the audience still growing, Funk says VR is an attractive area for marketers: the audience is highly coveted, viewers are completely engaged, and it offers the chance to be an early mover in what could be a major platform.
Turner also is planning to add on-demand VR content to the app, but that decision hasn't been finalized yet. Fans should expect ancillary content that fits in well with the live streams but aren't the kinds of things that would appear on linear TV. This extra content might or might not require authentication. Again, it's still to be determined.
Although that sounds like plenty, Intel and Turner have one more tech surprise for fans. In two NBA arenas - the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland and the American Airlines Center in Dallas - they'll be offering freeD views of game highlights. The long name for this is 360-degree volumetric video, and it allows the broadcaster to zero in on a key moment in play and show it from all angles. If you're asking, Is this like the Matrix effect?, yes, that's what it is. FreeD will show up in the linear-broadcast feeds, not the VR app. You can take a look at how it enhances these Minnesota Vikings and Houston Texans touchdowns. Intel is offering freeD technology to all the NBA's global partners in more than 200 countries. Intel also is looking to install the technology in other venues.
With Turner's upcoming VR app, even fans who can't attend games in person will feel like they did. With a few months to go until launch, Funk and his team are making sure the platform offers a great experience for both fans and brand partners.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
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...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
The days are getting longer, the temperatures are rising, and playlists are filling up for the season. With summer around the corner, Spotify's global edito...
29/05/2026
New retro-inspired MPC announced
There are few devices that have gained the status held by Akai Pro's MPC range, and in recent years, the company have s...
29/05/2026
Save up to 30 on acclaimed titles
Following a successful launch at Superbooth 2026, Bjooks have revealed that they will be continuing the Kickstarter campa...
29/05/2026
Binaural monitoring application improved
Genelec have just released an update that brings some powerful new features to their HRTF-based binaural headphone ...
29/05/2026
6 June 2026 at SAE Institute, London, UK
IMSTA FESTA 2026 is almost upon us, with some of the biggest names in pro-audio set to descend upon SAE Institute i...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
Latino Film Institute Fellows Screen Their Short Films at the Egyptian Theatre
The Inclusion Fellowship and Spark Animation Grant uplifts 15 ...
29/05/2026
GLOOKAST LAUNCHES CINNAFILM TACHYON PLUGIN FOR MEDIA PRODUCER AND MEDIA SERVICES
This release first appeared here.
Visit our Tachyon product page or contact...
29/05/2026
May 29 2026, 09:00 (PDT) Dolby and rednote Bring More Immersive Storytelling to...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Youtube exclusive special drops today
Watch now
UKTV today announces another e...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
The Official Trailer of Physical 100 Italy, on Netflix From Se...
VR Continues To Expand Across NBA With Turner Sports, Intel Deal Turner will live-stream about 30 VR games this season, beginning All-Star Weekend By Troy Dreier, Contributor, Streaming & Digital 
