Dan Lacaze: A Suit in SXSW – day four

Dan Lacaze, a Group Account Director at BMF Sydney, is attending SXSW in Austin, Texas and is writing a daily diary exclusively for Campaign Brief.

Day 4: The Wild West

People are here in Austin to make their fortune.

I attended a session called ‘Acing the Sporting Game with the Oculus Rift’. Three (very handsome) Dutch blokes were pitching how they were using Virtual Reality and Oculus Rift to train the national Dutch football team.

The biggest club in the Dutch League, Ajax Amsterdam, were also using the technology to help their players deconstruct their performance by reliving critical moments from a game, from other team mate’s perspectives. Apparently it’s had a huge impact on locker room politics!

Critically, it enabled the Coaches to train their teams for longer, as they only have so many physical hours they can put in on the pitch per day. They had some interesting studies on brain training and how it enhanced their players overall performance.

Oculus Rift was bought by Facebook for $3.2 billon. Samsung, Sony and HTC are now all in the game developing high-end headsets.

But the really interesting application is when the tech becomes democratised and accessible for the masses. The Dutchies also had disposable cardboard headset with lenses. You could download an app, and place your phone behind the lenses to create your own VR experience.

When you think about the application of these disposable kits for in-stadia viewing (I want to see what happened on the other side of the field), and in-home viewing (let me be Cahill when he scored that header) the possibilities are both exciting and endless.

In the future we won’t just purchase physical tickets, we’ll be buying a League pass with on-demand viewing, across multiple devices, with game day tickets for your team, and a virtual ticket to augment the lot.

It’s wild.