Super Bowl LII Promised Greater Augmented Reality Coverage, with a Possible Glimpse into the Future of Broadcast

One of the single biggest broadcast events showcased a strengthened focus on augmented reality this year. While it was not substantial, CBS expanded their football broadcast augmentation for Super Bowl LII for statistic visualization and general visual appeal. Any three-hour broadcast slot with an expected audience over 100 million will draw attention and can be a powerful example of a more augmented broadcast future. This isn’t the first major AR sports broadcast announcement, with the NBA partnering with Magic Leap early in 2018 and the MLB experimenting with VR tournaments and broadcasting. Nor are sports the only area where AR is being leveraged, with examples from the Weather Channel being showcased recently as well. However, nothing yet has had the audience of a Super Bowl.

Augmented reality in broadcast is far from a new idea, with examples reaching back decades, depending on one’s chosen definition of AR; field markers for the NFL were first introduced around 1998 and fit many criteria for augmented or mixed reality content (overlaid onto existing visuals, spatially locked, and accurate). A rapidly increasing amount of ancillary content, such as pre- and post-game shows, is using AR for audience and fan engagement, information display, and all-around visual flair. Pretty much every analyst desk broadcast is leveraging geo-registered digital content. The Weather Channel’s AR use has garnered attention with dynamic, spatially accurate visuals for things like snowfall and water levels.

Both the Super Bowl and Weather Channel bring up a question around definition creep: what exactly is augmented reality? Defining AR is an ongoing struggle for the market, and ABI Research tackles it by having well-defined structure to AR and VR coverage based on hardware, software, and use case differentiation. The examples of broadcast AR do fit within this paradigm, and many enabling technologies are shared between what a viewer of a sporting event sees and what an AR or VR HMD user would experience; machine vision and SLAM for spatial tracking and geo-registered content, shared viewpoint and content positioning between viewpoints (or users in the case of non-broadcast multi-user experiences), and more all overlap.

The potential for increasing total viewing audience with this technology is present, potentially attracting a younger crowd with more futuristic, interactive broadcasts. Although sports are one of the most lucrative areas for broadcast, the audience for traditional broadcast sports is mostly stagnant. With the strong potential for AR in sports, ideas that have been birthed and grown in the esports market will likely carry over. Ways to present action and data, especially with interactive elements, have a common ground between the two, and esports broadcasts have been experimenting with novel content presentation methods from the beginning.

ROI for broadcast enhancement is difficult to pin down. An increase in viewership will likely never directly tie back to AR. However, it is part of a wider, more holistic approach to maintaining and increasing content value. Apart from exploration of new monetization options—such as streaming service bundling—enhancement to the core content experience is a best-case scenario for growing an audience.

Despite similarities in content and audience, AR and VR will mostly serve separate use cases for traditional broadcast content. AR is perfect for information overlay and general content supplement, while VR is ideal for original but related content. HMD usage is set to be more suited to value-add scenarios with extra content than for consumption of the big ticket item. On-sight AR and VR experiences for live stadium experiences fit well here, and can be improved and expanded as 5G sees more usage in capture, broadcast, and general consumer cellular usage. While there’s potential for real time, user-controlled content viewing for traditional content—with multiple HMD-friendly camera angles and specialized presentation—the downfalls of the technology in regard to comfort and social stigma will outweigh potential value. Even so, there is demonstrable value in the ancillary items to major events, as well as the ongoing, smaller-scale content outside of the big-name items. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a Netflix or Hulu build out original content with AR/VR opportunities tied in (see Netflix’s recent “Bandersnatch” experiment for a rudimentary example of novel content delivery), or supplement ongoing series with value add experiences.

At its simplest, AR and VR offer another path forward for content, whether original or supplementary. As mobile AR grows in capability and installed base, barriers around hardware support and active users disappear. The popularity of location-based VR in the form of arcades proves value in the idea, and this idea can easily be expanded to on-site experiences for other types of entertainment. Perhaps most importantly, the increasing number of content creation tools and opportunities, alongside a maturing hardware marketplace, make investment into these new content opportunities more viable than ever. Expect to see AR/VR expand into more and more content going forward, whether that be through novel implementations or definitional creep counting existing content as AR. Either way, the market is expanding, as is the conversation around AR/VR tech in the entertainment space.