December 31, 2019 • 25 mins
The way we watch, play and coach our favorite sports and games is changing, thanks to imminent advancements in technology and connectivity. Surrounding industries are forging a parallel path to bring a new world of sports to reality, leveraging the 5G revolution to enable new stadium experiences plus creating new ways to watch and play, transforming the businesses of sports and gaming. In this episode, Krishna Bhagavathula, Chief Technology Officer of the NBA, shares how new technologies will increase engagement, viewership, and enhance the fan experience; Diana Hu, Head of the Augmented Reality Platform at Niantic, speaks about how mobile gaming stands to revolutionize the gaming and sports worlds alike; and Charlie Han, from Microsoft’s HoloLens team, discusses how they are developing hardware to tie these advancements together. Make sure to check out other episodes in this series featuring Harold Schapelhouman, Chief of the Menlo Park Fire Department and Nicole Raimundo, Chief Information Officer of Cary, North Carolina.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
On last week's episode, we discussed the new opportunities in
the field of virtual reality. We heard from Evelyn Morales,
the former head of VR at MASSA, Jeff Marshall, the
founder of Ovation, a business built around VR based public
speaking training, and Daniel McIntyre a K. Danny Mack, the
director of Community Corrections for Pennsylvania, where he has developed
an innovative VR program to help inmates prior to release.
(00:33):
Even in an industry as steeped in tradition as professional sports,
change is coming. Five G, the next generation of wireless innovation,
will bring new opportunities and ways to engage customers in
all their favorite pastimes thanks to support from Temobile. For
Business Today will explore how five G enables innovations in
sports and changes the way we deliver experiences to hyper
(00:56):
connected fans. This is my piner sky picture, but imagine
driving up and being directed to that empty parking spot
in real time, right without having to, you know, drive around,
(01:20):
because the network knows that you're close by, and it's
optimized to ensure that everybody gets into the right parking
spot in the minimum time possible, right, and the app
knows where you are and it actually directs you to
the fastest turnstyle and you get through the turnstyle using
your mobile tickets. That's Krishna Bagabatula speaking. He is the
(01:41):
Chief Technology Officer of the National Basketball Association the n
b A, and he's describing how he sees the fan
experience changing in a world of five g And as
you pass through the turnstyle, you're getting real deals in
real time for the merch or it could be food
and beverages or concessions or what have you. And as
soon as you get there, as going up to the
(02:05):
merchandise store or the concession stands and picking up items
that you want and not having to go through a
checkout because it's going to be a checkout free experience.
Those are some of the immediate things that a fan
could experience even before they've hit their seats. A big
part of Christian's job is to project the NBA into
(02:26):
the future and determine what technologies are most relevant to
get there, which means he has to constantly keep his
eyes open to new ideas. I mean, the one thing
about technology that I really enjoy is that it's the
never done feel around technology. I think we are never
truly truly done. It's that mindset that I think we
(02:46):
as technologists need to have that you can never rest
on your laurels. There's something else that's going to come
up tomorrow that could potentially disrupt what you have today,
So you have to measure what you're doing today so
that you can be more delightful experience for your fans tomorrow.
There's a reason the NBA has a CTO. Sports are
(03:06):
becoming more and more integrated with technology. Fans control instant
replays on their phone while sitting in the bleachers, and
NFL players are equipped with radio chips that capture real
time data. In the future, staying home won't necessarily mean
you can't be on the field, and sports is also
a great proving ground for new technology and approaches in general.
(03:29):
Before every business in the world became data driven, there
was Moneyball, Michael Lewis's two thousand and three book about
Billy Bean's pioneering and successful approach to assembling a baseball
team based on hard numbers and statistics. Another big trend
we hear a lot about is gamification, or building user
engagement by leaning on the techniques of games. In this episode,
(03:50):
we will look at how technology being developed in the
gaming world could transform the experience of watching sports, and
we'll take a broader look at how five G could
enable new types of fan engagement inside the stadium and
at home. I'm aloshen, welcome to this time tomorrow. So, Kara,
(04:13):
I hate to throw you a curveball, but are you
a big sports fan? No, it's ten I mean, if
tennis is a sport, I'm sort of well, I hope
tennis is a sport because it's definitely my best sport
and my favorite sport too, although it's not much a
team sport. There's not much getting down and dirty in
the mud. I don't know if you've noticed this, but
(04:34):
the definition of sports has changed. There was this sn
L sketch recently with Chance the Rapper, and he was
playing an e sports reporter, and everyone in the sketch
was kind of like, is this real? Like can people
really report on other people playing video games? But I mean,
I guess you know, people are playing the sports as
other athletes. Well, in a way, there's something kind of
(04:55):
fundamentally similar about sports and the sports. You have this
sense of competition and mate the whole thing. You have
this sense of camaraderie amongst the players, and then you
have fandom and spectatorship people watching. Speaking of contact sports,
I never thought i'd say this, but something really cool
happened out of football game. Have you been to a
(05:15):
stadium before, I have, so, when you have really bad
seats like I've had, you watched the game on the JumboTron.
So recently at this Raven's Verse Jets game, people were
watching the jumbo tron and things were happening, and all
of a sudden, a Raven, which is the mascot, flew
through the screen. Wow. So it was like this incredible
instance of augmented reality happening as fans were watching on
(05:39):
the jumbo tron. Well, augmented reality is a huge area
of interest and investment in the world of sports. We
actually spoke earlier in this series about virtual reality and
how it may be enabled by five G Well, a
R is another area like that, because low latency and
high bandwidth could be transformative in our quest to build
digital worlds which we overlay on physical world And I'm
(06:02):
going to talk to Diana who who's head of augmented
reality at Niantic. We're gonna hear from Charlie Hahn, who
is a principal program manager on Microsoft's Hollow Lens too.
The first let's return to Krishna. I actually say this
about myself. I'm a sports fan, but a cricket tragic.
(06:23):
I grew up passionate about cricket, lived breathe cricket. So
when I came to the US over twenty five years ago,
also got into football and basketball, and then over the years,
you know, fell in love with the NBA as well.
That experience of being a fan infuses all of Chrishna's
work as he thinks about how to find new opportunities
(06:43):
for engagement. We are constantly looking to break new ground
in terms of fan experiences, so we have started experimenting
with different ways of doing that. We have installed cameras
in the rafters of feature of our arenas, and there
are different modes in which you can actually view a game.
(07:06):
We did a special broadcast on ESPN Plus which essentially
gave three different viewing modes um to our viewers. There
was a coach mode, a player mode, or a mascot mode.
The coach mode was really a playbook version of the game.
Right you were watching the game, but you could actually
watch it like a coach would see it. The player
(07:28):
mode featured above rim cameras and graphic overlays and even
scoring probability of all the five offensive players on the court.
And the mascot mode was a more fun, entertaining presentation
featuring special graphics you know, like a fire graphic when
a basket was made, just to make it more entertaining.
(07:49):
Right for the casual fan, What Christna describes is the
first step on the road to personalized entertainment. In the future,
fans could actively participate in creating their own nique experience
of a sporting event, and even deeper form of personalization
could come in the form of augmented reality. And Christiana
has spent a lot of time thinking about how to
(08:10):
engage new audiences with new types of content, both in
his previous role as CTO of NBC News Digital and
as the parent of a teenager. What I've learned from
my fourteen year old daughter is that the experience about
going to a concert specifically and occasionally at games as well,
is not so much as watching the game yourself, but
(08:32):
it's also about letting people know where you are, so
the moment you get into your seats. You can have
multiple um Insta or whatever apps, snap apps that you
use open and you're broadcasting out to your friends. So
what role might five G play in creating this new
future of participatory fan experiences. I mean, at the end
(08:52):
of the day, if you think about it, what does
five G do is it's actually going to improve the
reliability of the connection and it's going to improve the
speed of the data that is actually going through the pipe. Right,
So what that translates to us is in terms of
the end product, it will actually be embettered experience for
the fan. So as just in the last five to
ten years, the experience of the fan has already changed
(09:15):
a lot. You know, you can engage on social media
and lifetime, you can watch on mobile devices, you can
pause a live feed or even get push notifications about
your games. And maybe in the not so distant future,
we will be able to watch sports in an entirely
new way, which would be about augmenting our real world
with additional information from the digital world to enhance the experience.
(09:38):
That could be visual, that could be sensory. You could
be watching in a live football game, but in your
line of sight. Also the statistics in real time, and
to make this real, cts like Chrishner are going to
have to lean on industry leaders who are connecting the
dots between these two realities, and that will really give
fans a full three six D connected experience. This idea
(09:59):
of the collaborative experience is interesting though, because you know,
walking around I think you once referred to it as
being a turtleneck. We're all staring down at our phones
all the time, and we connect with people through apps
and text messages, and we kind of if we look up,
we realized that everybody's head is buried in their phone
and there's less eye contact and less organic human connection.
(10:19):
So this idea of sharing a real and a digital
world in a new way could be even more culturally
significant than the event of the smartphone. It's called turtle posture.
I'm sorry, turtleneck is a sweater. You're right. If we
don't have to look down anymore, though, I'm sure next
would be very appreciative, but it's a bit harder for
me to imagine two people seeing something intangible at the
(10:40):
same time. Although when you apply it to the concept
of sports and gaming, you see the applications quite clearly,
all of a sudden, people can play are games together.
And you mentioned the similarity between sports and business as
these fields of endeavor where teamwork and good data are crucial.
Another area just like that is games. According to Forbes,
(11:01):
in esports generated one billion dollars in revenue and an
audience of more than four million people, and the notion
has shared experience that so crucial to all of this
is something I discussed with Diana who she's the head
of augmented Reality at Niantic. Niantics more than a gaming company,
is a technology company. What we're building here a Niantic
(11:22):
it is the foundational technology to enable this world. We
are building sort of the bridges, the roads for the future.
Gamers have always been early adopters of new technology, and
according to Diana, you can think of games as a
kind of technological testing ground for the future, and some
of the advancements in gaming and paving the way for
(11:44):
how technology can then be used in sports and beyond.
Gaming is really the industry where creators feel more liberated
to innovate because they don't have some of the seriousness
from other industries, and it really attracts the kind interesting
quirky people that really push the boundaries of tech. And
of course Niantic is most famous for the game Pokemon Go.
(12:08):
It really was the game that put augmented reality in
the vocabulary of your six year old to your sixty
year old. Because the fascinating thing about Pokemon Going and
the games that we built is that they're intergenerational. So
that is kind of a game that really engaged multiple people.
In a R, it wouldn't be as fun if you
(12:30):
have all these cool visualistations and you're just by yourself.
And this is where we use a lot of the
interesting things that removing the limits we have with four
G we can take advantage of to really get that
experience to be really low latency, so that sharing with
your friends it feels natural. Because one thing about a R.
In order for a R to feel good, it needs
(12:53):
to behave how you spect reality behaves right Like if
I'm walking down the street, let's say with you, I'm
saying something, I'm having all these gestures and then you're
saying something back to me. There's no loading barrels in
between our interaction. It's all in real time. So with
the current way for G works, which is in the
hundreds and make a bits. There's some limits in terms
(13:15):
of how quickly you can get our response time if
we're trying to synchronize an augmented shared reality. Five G
supposed to give you more bandwidth, and what bandwidth is
is kind of getting more lanes in your highway. So
more lanes in your highways means more people and bigger
data packages. The device that defined the first and second
generations of wireless technology was the mobile phone. The third
(13:38):
and fourth generations are synonymous with the smartphone, and Diana
hopes the device that defines five G will look all
together different. So there's three billion at least smartphones in
the world today. Do you see a world in which
there's three billion augmented reality hassets? Sure and not. I
do believe they are will be every where. It will
(14:00):
be something that you will use, and it might completely
replace your best stop computer because you could basically visualize
information anywhere in any surface, so you don't need screens anymore.
The whole world has the potential to be a screen
in a sense. This talk of turning the whole world
into a screen brings us back to Krishna at the
NBA and his vision for the future of the fan
(14:22):
experience to what might be possible tomorrow, both views at
home and in the stadium. I'm actually very bullish about
augmented reality. I actually think there's a variety of experiences
that can drive right, starting with the inn arena experience, right,
I mean you're interested in the stats around the player,
you know, imagine you could just point your camera at
(14:43):
that player and through the NBA app or what have you,
and then it shows you the stats around that player, right,
or potentially even content around that player. So that's that's
one way of experiencing more about the game through augmented reality.
All of a sudden, you can start to imagine a
world where you can seamlessly enrich your enjoyment of a
(15:03):
game with additional information or even probabilities about your favorite
player making that three pointer. If you think about the
NBA super fan, right, they are devouring our advanced stats.
We have a vast array of stats and being able
to use those stats into graphic overlays during the game
(15:24):
is extremely powerful. Some of the barriers to the world
Krishna describes are to do with augmented reality hardware, even
the hollow lens to price at thirty is still only
available to enterprise clients, but another challenge is bannedwidth. The
low latency and data processing needed to make these experiences
truly ubiquitous is all part of the promise of future
(15:46):
five G networks, and according to Krishna, basketball stadiums are
the perfect venue to demonstrate its potential. I actually think
it can work effectively in NBA arenas because the bulk
of far arenas are dome shaped, so you can actually
mount these millimeter wave antennas up in the catwalk and
(16:07):
you can point them down to the fans in either
the upper or lower balls and they would be able
to use their five gen devices and then take advantage
of the you know, increaded, lower latency and fasted throughput
capabilities provided by the five teen networks. It's cool to
see how a company like Niantic is paving the landscape
(16:29):
of tomorrow in terms of how we play and watch
sports like professional basketball. If we look at how gaming
is utilizing new technologies for fans to play and watch
their favorite games, we can all imagine a far more
immersive and enhanced way to not only watch our favorite sports,
but to participate and compete in them in better ways too,
But we still need to answer how those new techniques
(16:51):
will be harnessed when combined with greater connectivity. New projects
like Microsoft's Hollow Lens and the advancements coming in the
future with five G make Christianas vision of a connected
gaming and sports experience look less like a pipe dream
and more like a realistic future. The future with five
G is coming today. T Mobile is leading the five
(17:14):
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to deliver new capabilities. Improved connectivity and true mobility provided
by an advanced network from T Mobile for Business could
change the way we all live and work. The five
G era will take the best technologies available today in
the wireless space so that you can offer new capabilities
(17:36):
to your business customers. T Mobile for Business knows that
the future of business will be powered by advancements in
wireless networks. With these new technologies opening the doors for
better ways to get the job done. Business is changing.
Learn more at t Mobile for Business dot com. I
was really excited to talk with Charlie Han, who is
(17:56):
the product lead for Hollow Lens to the second general
shouldn't mixed reality headset built by Microsoft. The Microsoft hollow
Lens is a wearable device with a kind of transparent
visor that projects a hologram onto your eyes, allowing you
to see both real and virtual worlds at the same
time you watch Star Trek, you watch Star Wars. Holograms
(18:19):
has always been sort of an integral part of what
the future looks like, and we wanted to sort of
pay homage to that concept of holograms, but at the
same time also bring that together with the concept of
while these are glasses, these are lenses into that world.
When we designed Hollo Lens Too, we really centered around
design pillars and they were comfort, immersion, and time to value,
(18:40):
and you know, the notion of putting it on. This
notion of comfort was something that we spent a lot
of time and energy on because we wanted it to
feel like something that you could just get into and
out of extraordinarily easily. We've really designed it after this
concept of putting on a baseball cap. Hollow Lands Too
has the capabilities to give workers more information on the job,
(19:04):
coaches more information on the playing field, and even fans
more information when they're watching their favorite team. One of
the first demo experiences we created with the first generation
Holllands was actually with the NFL showing what it could
be like to have instant live replays, being able to
drill in and see plays from different views and angles,
lots of you know, stats, augmented experiences. You know, one
(19:27):
of the most fascinating things about sports is not even
necessarily the sport itself, but all of the statistics and
you know, fantasy leagues that follow alongside it, and being
able to augment that sort of TV experience or that
viewing experience live with something like this is always come
up time and time again in terms of viewership engagement.
Sports have historically been about both entertainment and performance, but
(19:49):
technology is changing both dimensions the way fans watch sports
and the way athletes perform on the field. How can
you create a virtual scenario where you can go and
watch yourself in position, understand where you should have been,
could have been, for a better play, for a better
reaction to a particular scenario situation on the field. Those
(20:10):
have been things that we've worked with a number of
different leagues and player associations on what those opportunities could
look like. As technology takes sports to a place where
it becomes more immersive. It begs the question, how might
advances in five G, something that promises faster speeds and
greater connectivity, pushed mixed reality even further. Think about the
(20:32):
last time you've been to you know, a seventy person
football stadium and trying to use your phone, right, That
is just it's a barrier. It's a limit to being
able to create even more immersive, more interactive, richer experiences
on the networks and infrastructure that we have today. You
start bringing in things like five G and suddenly you
can start actually serving you know, a wide number of
(20:54):
customers in a particular location. I think the thing that
actually really sits in my mind is this notion of
not just what you can do on your own, not
what you can sort of just see on your own,
the holograms you can interact with on your own, is
that this notion of everything becomes network, everything becomes interconnected.
For the time being, Hollow Lens two is not a
(21:16):
consumer facing product. It costs thirty dollars and is only
available for enterprise customers meaning businesses. But when they do
become commercially available, they will help bridge the gap between
today's fixed reality and Christia's Enhanced Fan Experience vision of tomorrow,
especially when we think about connecting fans not only the stadium,
(21:37):
but even in the comfort of their homes as they
watch and interact with their favorite teams and players. The
potential is even greater when you consider what Charlie discussed
about how the technology could be used to better train
athletes and amateurs alike in their favorite sports. And when
combined with the future with the potential for ubiquitous connectivity,
you can imagine a world where you can practice or
(21:58):
even play your favorite game Aims wherever you are. Available
now from my Heart a new series presented by Tembile
for Business, The Restless Ones join host Johnson Strickland as
he explores the upcoming five year revolution and the business
(22:19):
leaders who stand right on the cutting edge. There are
certain decision makers who are restless. They know there is
a better way to get things done, and they're ready,
curious and excited for the next technological innovation to unlock
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pursuit of bigger, better, smarter, stronger. They seek new partners,
(22:40):
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deep into how they think of five year revolution could
propel their business forward. The Restless Ones is now available
on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
(23:05):
Gros fund to report this episode because we've got to
talk about sports and games. I think the connective tissue
here is augmented reality or are the applications that are
either here or on the near horizon are all about
overlaying digital information onto the real world. I think it's
actually about erasing the lines between industries like gaming and sports,
you know, different forms of pastimes with equally engaged fans
(23:28):
who want an experience that goes beyond what's currently available.
And to the industry leaders like the people we spoke
to on this episode, the ability to leverage the potential
of future five G networks becomes a quintessential tool in
helping build the future of both industries. I don't really
think of myself as much of a gamer, but it
was fascinating to speak to Diana of Nyanti, who really
made the case that gaming is a testing ground for
(23:49):
new technologies before they enter the mainstream, and clearly sports
will be an early adopter, whether it's Christiana talking about
overlaying stats on top of players in real time in
the stadium, or only from Microsoft talking about how players
could use augmented reality to train better, and they all
seem to be on parallel paths of development that will
help answer questions of applied usage. You know, Christmas vision
(24:12):
of a hyper connected fan experience is answered by Niantics
development and a r with a future hope of implementing
it through devices like hollow ones. And it's really interesting
to see this kind of cross pollination as we explore
This Time Tomorrow, which happens to be the name of
our podcast. On the next episode of This Time Tomorrow,
we'll look at how lower powered senses technology that's central
(24:34):
to the promise of five G could change retail and clothing.
We asked the question what is the future of wearables
and connected clothes. I'm also lushan see you next time,
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ground up for the next wave of innovation from mobile
(24:57):
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as well as the dedicated, award winning customer service you'd
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On last week's episode, we discussed the new opportunities in
the field of virtual reality. We heard from Evelyn Morales,
the former head of VR at MASSA, Jeff Marshall, the
founder of Ovation, a business built around VR based public
speaking training, and Daniel McIntyre a K. Danny Mack, the
director of Community Corrections for Pennsylvania, where he has developed
an innovative VR program to help inmates prior to release.
(00:33):
Even in an industry as steeped in tradition as professional sports,
change is coming. Five G, the next generation of wireless innovation,
will bring new opportunities and ways to engage customers in
all their favorite pastimes thanks to support from Temobile. For
Business Today will explore how five G enables innovations in
sports and changes the way we deliver experiences to hyper
(00:56):
connected fans. This is my piner sky picture, but imagine
driving up and being directed to that empty parking spot
in real time, right without having to, you know, drive around,
(01:20):
because the network knows that you're close by, and it's
optimized to ensure that everybody gets into the right parking
spot in the minimum time possible, right, and the app
knows where you are and it actually directs you to
the fastest turnstyle and you get through the turnstyle using
your mobile tickets. That's Krishna Bagabatula speaking. He is the
(01:41):
Chief Technology Officer of the National Basketball Association the n
b A, and he's describing how he sees the fan
experience changing in a world of five g And as
you pass through the turnstyle, you're getting real deals in
real time for the merch or it could be food
and beverages or concessions or what have you. And as
soon as you get there, as going up to the
(02:05):
merchandise store or the concession stands and picking up items
that you want and not having to go through a
checkout because it's going to be a checkout free experience.
Those are some of the immediate things that a fan
could experience even before they've hit their seats. A big
part of Christian's job is to project the NBA into
(02:26):
the future and determine what technologies are most relevant to
get there, which means he has to constantly keep his
eyes open to new ideas. I mean, the one thing
about technology that I really enjoy is that it's the
never done feel around technology. I think we are never
truly truly done. It's that mindset that I think we
(02:46):
as technologists need to have that you can never rest
on your laurels. There's something else that's going to come
up tomorrow that could potentially disrupt what you have today,
So you have to measure what you're doing today so
that you can be more delightful experience for your fans tomorrow.
There's a reason the NBA has a CTO. Sports are
(03:06):
becoming more and more integrated with technology. Fans control instant
replays on their phone while sitting in the bleachers, and
NFL players are equipped with radio chips that capture real
time data. In the future, staying home won't necessarily mean
you can't be on the field, and sports is also
a great proving ground for new technology and approaches in general.
(03:29):
Before every business in the world became data driven, there
was Moneyball, Michael Lewis's two thousand and three book about
Billy Bean's pioneering and successful approach to assembling a baseball
team based on hard numbers and statistics. Another big trend
we hear a lot about is gamification, or building user
engagement by leaning on the techniques of games. In this episode,
(03:50):
we will look at how technology being developed in the
gaming world could transform the experience of watching sports, and
we'll take a broader look at how five G could
enable new types of fan engagement inside the stadium and
at home. I'm aloshen, welcome to this time tomorrow. So, Kara,
(04:13):
I hate to throw you a curveball, but are you
a big sports fan? No, it's ten I mean, if
tennis is a sport, I'm sort of well, I hope
tennis is a sport because it's definitely my best sport
and my favorite sport too, although it's not much a
team sport. There's not much getting down and dirty in
the mud. I don't know if you've noticed this, but
(04:34):
the definition of sports has changed. There was this sn
L sketch recently with Chance the Rapper, and he was
playing an e sports reporter, and everyone in the sketch
was kind of like, is this real? Like can people
really report on other people playing video games? But I mean,
I guess you know, people are playing the sports as
other athletes. Well, in a way, there's something kind of
(04:55):
fundamentally similar about sports and the sports. You have this
sense of competition and mate the whole thing. You have
this sense of camaraderie amongst the players, and then you
have fandom and spectatorship people watching. Speaking of contact sports,
I never thought i'd say this, but something really cool
happened out of football game. Have you been to a
(05:15):
stadium before, I have, so, when you have really bad
seats like I've had, you watched the game on the JumboTron.
So recently at this Raven's Verse Jets game, people were
watching the jumbo tron and things were happening, and all
of a sudden, a Raven, which is the mascot, flew
through the screen. Wow. So it was like this incredible
instance of augmented reality happening as fans were watching on
(05:39):
the jumbo tron. Well, augmented reality is a huge area
of interest and investment in the world of sports. We
actually spoke earlier in this series about virtual reality and
how it may be enabled by five G Well, a
R is another area like that, because low latency and
high bandwidth could be transformative in our quest to build
digital worlds which we overlay on physical world And I'm
(06:02):
going to talk to Diana who who's head of augmented
reality at Niantic. We're gonna hear from Charlie Hahn, who
is a principal program manager on Microsoft's Hollow Lens too.
The first let's return to Krishna. I actually say this
about myself. I'm a sports fan, but a cricket tragic.
(06:23):
I grew up passionate about cricket, lived breathe cricket. So
when I came to the US over twenty five years ago,
also got into football and basketball, and then over the years,
you know, fell in love with the NBA as well.
That experience of being a fan infuses all of Chrishna's
work as he thinks about how to find new opportunities
(06:43):
for engagement. We are constantly looking to break new ground
in terms of fan experiences, so we have started experimenting
with different ways of doing that. We have installed cameras
in the rafters of feature of our arenas, and there
are different modes in which you can actually view a game.
(07:06):
We did a special broadcast on ESPN Plus which essentially
gave three different viewing modes um to our viewers. There
was a coach mode, a player mode, or a mascot mode.
The coach mode was really a playbook version of the game.
Right you were watching the game, but you could actually
watch it like a coach would see it. The player
(07:28):
mode featured above rim cameras and graphic overlays and even
scoring probability of all the five offensive players on the court.
And the mascot mode was a more fun, entertaining presentation
featuring special graphics you know, like a fire graphic when
a basket was made, just to make it more entertaining.
(07:49):
Right for the casual fan, What Christna describes is the
first step on the road to personalized entertainment. In the future,
fans could actively participate in creating their own nique experience
of a sporting event, and even deeper form of personalization
could come in the form of augmented reality. And Christiana
has spent a lot of time thinking about how to
(08:10):
engage new audiences with new types of content, both in
his previous role as CTO of NBC News Digital and
as the parent of a teenager. What I've learned from
my fourteen year old daughter is that the experience about
going to a concert specifically and occasionally at games as well,
is not so much as watching the game yourself, but
(08:32):
it's also about letting people know where you are, so
the moment you get into your seats. You can have
multiple um Insta or whatever apps, snap apps that you
use open and you're broadcasting out to your friends. So
what role might five G play in creating this new
future of participatory fan experiences. I mean, at the end
(08:52):
of the day, if you think about it, what does
five G do is it's actually going to improve the
reliability of the connection and it's going to improve the
speed of the data that is actually going through the pipe. Right,
So what that translates to us is in terms of
the end product, it will actually be embettered experience for
the fan. So as just in the last five to
ten years, the experience of the fan has already changed
(09:15):
a lot. You know, you can engage on social media
and lifetime, you can watch on mobile devices, you can
pause a live feed or even get push notifications about
your games. And maybe in the not so distant future,
we will be able to watch sports in an entirely
new way, which would be about augmenting our real world
with additional information from the digital world to enhance the experience.
(09:38):
That could be visual, that could be sensory. You could
be watching in a live football game, but in your
line of sight. Also the statistics in real time, and
to make this real, cts like Chrishner are going to
have to lean on industry leaders who are connecting the
dots between these two realities, and that will really give
fans a full three six D connected experience. This idea
(09:59):
of the collaborative experience is interesting though, because you know,
walking around I think you once referred to it as
being a turtleneck. We're all staring down at our phones
all the time, and we connect with people through apps
and text messages, and we kind of if we look up,
we realized that everybody's head is buried in their phone
and there's less eye contact and less organic human connection.
(10:19):
So this idea of sharing a real and a digital
world in a new way could be even more culturally
significant than the event of the smartphone. It's called turtle posture.
I'm sorry, turtleneck is a sweater. You're right. If we
don't have to look down anymore, though, I'm sure next
would be very appreciative, but it's a bit harder for
me to imagine two people seeing something intangible at the
(10:40):
same time. Although when you apply it to the concept
of sports and gaming, you see the applications quite clearly,
all of a sudden, people can play are games together.
And you mentioned the similarity between sports and business as
these fields of endeavor where teamwork and good data are crucial.
Another area just like that is games. According to Forbes,
(11:01):
in esports generated one billion dollars in revenue and an
audience of more than four million people, and the notion
has shared experience that so crucial to all of this
is something I discussed with Diana who she's the head
of augmented Reality at Niantic. Niantics more than a gaming company,
is a technology company. What we're building here a Niantic
(11:22):
it is the foundational technology to enable this world. We
are building sort of the bridges, the roads for the future.
Gamers have always been early adopters of new technology, and
according to Diana, you can think of games as a
kind of technological testing ground for the future, and some
of the advancements in gaming and paving the way for
(11:44):
how technology can then be used in sports and beyond.
Gaming is really the industry where creators feel more liberated
to innovate because they don't have some of the seriousness
from other industries, and it really attracts the kind interesting
quirky people that really push the boundaries of tech. And
of course Niantic is most famous for the game Pokemon Go.
(12:08):
It really was the game that put augmented reality in
the vocabulary of your six year old to your sixty
year old. Because the fascinating thing about Pokemon Going and
the games that we built is that they're intergenerational. So
that is kind of a game that really engaged multiple people.
In a R, it wouldn't be as fun if you
(12:30):
have all these cool visualistations and you're just by yourself.
And this is where we use a lot of the
interesting things that removing the limits we have with four
G we can take advantage of to really get that
experience to be really low latency, so that sharing with
your friends it feels natural. Because one thing about a R.
In order for a R to feel good, it needs
(12:53):
to behave how you spect reality behaves right Like if
I'm walking down the street, let's say with you, I'm
saying something, I'm having all these gestures and then you're
saying something back to me. There's no loading barrels in
between our interaction. It's all in real time. So with
the current way for G works, which is in the
hundreds and make a bits. There's some limits in terms
(13:15):
of how quickly you can get our response time if
we're trying to synchronize an augmented shared reality. Five G
supposed to give you more bandwidth, and what bandwidth is
is kind of getting more lanes in your highway. So
more lanes in your highways means more people and bigger
data packages. The device that defined the first and second
generations of wireless technology was the mobile phone. The third
(13:38):
and fourth generations are synonymous with the smartphone, and Diana
hopes the device that defines five G will look all
together different. So there's three billion at least smartphones in
the world today. Do you see a world in which
there's three billion augmented reality hassets? Sure and not. I
do believe they are will be every where. It will
(14:00):
be something that you will use, and it might completely
replace your best stop computer because you could basically visualize
information anywhere in any surface, so you don't need screens anymore.
The whole world has the potential to be a screen
in a sense. This talk of turning the whole world
into a screen brings us back to Krishna at the
NBA and his vision for the future of the fan
(14:22):
experience to what might be possible tomorrow, both views at
home and in the stadium. I'm actually very bullish about
augmented reality. I actually think there's a variety of experiences
that can drive right, starting with the inn arena experience, right,
I mean you're interested in the stats around the player,
you know, imagine you could just point your camera at
(14:43):
that player and through the NBA app or what have you,
and then it shows you the stats around that player, right,
or potentially even content around that player. So that's that's
one way of experiencing more about the game through augmented reality.
All of a sudden, you can start to imagine a
world where you can seamlessly enrich your enjoyment of a
(15:03):
game with additional information or even probabilities about your favorite
player making that three pointer. If you think about the
NBA super fan, right, they are devouring our advanced stats.
We have a vast array of stats and being able
to use those stats into graphic overlays during the game
(15:24):
is extremely powerful. Some of the barriers to the world
Krishna describes are to do with augmented reality hardware, even
the hollow lens to price at thirty is still only
available to enterprise clients, but another challenge is bannedwidth. The
low latency and data processing needed to make these experiences
truly ubiquitous is all part of the promise of future
(15:46):
five G networks, and according to Krishna, basketball stadiums are
the perfect venue to demonstrate its potential. I actually think
it can work effectively in NBA arenas because the bulk
of far arenas are dome shaped, so you can actually
mount these millimeter wave antennas up in the catwalk and
(16:07):
you can point them down to the fans in either
the upper or lower balls and they would be able
to use their five gen devices and then take advantage
of the you know, increaded, lower latency and fasted throughput
capabilities provided by the five teen networks. It's cool to
see how a company like Niantic is paving the landscape
(16:29):
of tomorrow in terms of how we play and watch
sports like professional basketball. If we look at how gaming
is utilizing new technologies for fans to play and watch
their favorite games, we can all imagine a far more
immersive and enhanced way to not only watch our favorite sports,
but to participate and compete in them in better ways too,
But we still need to answer how those new techniques
(16:51):
will be harnessed when combined with greater connectivity. New projects
like Microsoft's Hollow Lens and the advancements coming in the
future with five G make Christianas vision of a connected
gaming and sports experience look less like a pipe dream
and more like a realistic future. The future with five
G is coming today. T Mobile is leading the five
(17:14):
G charge with thirty billion dollars invested in their network
to deliver new capabilities. Improved connectivity and true mobility provided
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change the way we all live and work. The five
G era will take the best technologies available today in
the wireless space so that you can offer new capabilities
(17:36):
to your business customers. T Mobile for Business knows that
the future of business will be powered by advancements in
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better ways to get the job done. Business is changing.
Learn more at t Mobile for Business dot com. I
was really excited to talk with Charlie Han, who is
(17:56):
the product lead for Hollow Lens to the second general
shouldn't mixed reality headset built by Microsoft. The Microsoft hollow
Lens is a wearable device with a kind of transparent
visor that projects a hologram onto your eyes, allowing you
to see both real and virtual worlds at the same
time you watch Star Trek, you watch Star Wars. Holograms
(18:19):
has always been sort of an integral part of what
the future looks like, and we wanted to sort of
pay homage to that concept of holograms, but at the
same time also bring that together with the concept of
while these are glasses, these are lenses into that world.
When we designed Hollo Lens Too, we really centered around
design pillars and they were comfort, immersion, and time to value,
(18:40):
and you know, the notion of putting it on. This
notion of comfort was something that we spent a lot
of time and energy on because we wanted it to
feel like something that you could just get into and
out of extraordinarily easily. We've really designed it after this
concept of putting on a baseball cap. Hollow Lands Too
has the capabilities to give workers more information on the job,
(19:04):
coaches more information on the playing field, and even fans
more information when they're watching their favorite team. One of
the first demo experiences we created with the first generation
Holllands was actually with the NFL showing what it could
be like to have instant live replays, being able to
drill in and see plays from different views and angles,
lots of you know, stats, augmented experiences. You know, one
(19:27):
of the most fascinating things about sports is not even
necessarily the sport itself, but all of the statistics and
you know, fantasy leagues that follow alongside it, and being
able to augment that sort of TV experience or that
viewing experience live with something like this is always come
up time and time again in terms of viewership engagement.
Sports have historically been about both entertainment and performance, but
(19:49):
technology is changing both dimensions the way fans watch sports
and the way athletes perform on the field. How can
you create a virtual scenario where you can go and
watch yourself in position, understand where you should have been,
could have been, for a better play, for a better
reaction to a particular scenario situation on the field. Those
(20:10):
have been things that we've worked with a number of
different leagues and player associations on what those opportunities could
look like. As technology takes sports to a place where
it becomes more immersive. It begs the question, how might
advances in five G, something that promises faster speeds and
greater connectivity, pushed mixed reality even further. Think about the
(20:32):
last time you've been to you know, a seventy person
football stadium and trying to use your phone, right, That
is just it's a barrier. It's a limit to being
able to create even more immersive, more interactive, richer experiences
on the networks and infrastructure that we have today. You
start bringing in things like five G and suddenly you
can start actually serving you know, a wide number of
(20:54):
customers in a particular location. I think the thing that
actually really sits in my mind is this notion of
not just what you can do on your own, not
what you can sort of just see on your own,
the holograms you can interact with on your own, is
that this notion of everything becomes network, everything becomes interconnected.
For the time being, Hollow Lens two is not a
(21:16):
consumer facing product. It costs thirty dollars and is only
available for enterprise customers meaning businesses. But when they do
become commercially available, they will help bridge the gap between
today's fixed reality and Christia's Enhanced Fan Experience vision of tomorrow,
especially when we think about connecting fans not only the stadium,
(21:37):
but even in the comfort of their homes as they
watch and interact with their favorite teams and players. The
potential is even greater when you consider what Charlie discussed
about how the technology could be used to better train
athletes and amateurs alike in their favorite sports. And when
combined with the future with the potential for ubiquitous connectivity,
you can imagine a world where you can practice or
(21:58):
even play your favorite game Aims wherever you are. Available
now from my Heart a new series presented by Tembile
for Business, The Restless Ones join host Johnson Strickland as
he explores the upcoming five year revolution and the business
(22:19):
leaders who stand right on the cutting edge. There are
certain decision makers who are restless. They know there is
a better way to get things done, and they're ready,
curious and excited for the next technological innovation to unlock
their vision of the future. These restless ones are in
pursuit of bigger, better, smarter, stronger. They seek new partners,
(22:40):
new strategies, new processes. They pursue innovative platforms and solutions
to propel their teams, businesses, and industries forward. In each episode,
we'll learn more from the Restless Ones themselves and dive
deep into how they think of five year revolution could
propel their business forward. The Restless Ones is now available
on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
(23:05):
Gros fund to report this episode because we've got to
talk about sports and games. I think the connective tissue
here is augmented reality or are the applications that are
either here or on the near horizon are all about
overlaying digital information onto the real world. I think it's
actually about erasing the lines between industries like gaming and sports,
you know, different forms of pastimes with equally engaged fans
(23:28):
who want an experience that goes beyond what's currently available.
And to the industry leaders like the people we spoke
to on this episode, the ability to leverage the potential
of future five G networks becomes a quintessential tool in
helping build the future of both industries. I don't really
think of myself as much of a gamer, but it
was fascinating to speak to Diana of Nyanti, who really
made the case that gaming is a testing ground for
(23:49):
new technologies before they enter the mainstream, and clearly sports
will be an early adopter, whether it's Christiana talking about
overlaying stats on top of players in real time in
the stadium, or only from Microsoft talking about how players
could use augmented reality to train better, and they all
seem to be on parallel paths of development that will
help answer questions of applied usage. You know, Christmas vision
(24:12):
of a hyper connected fan experience is answered by Niantics
development and a r with a future hope of implementing
it through devices like hollow ones. And it's really interesting
to see this kind of cross pollination as we explore
This Time Tomorrow, which happens to be the name of
our podcast. On the next episode of This Time Tomorrow,
we'll look at how lower powered senses technology that's central
(24:34):
to the promise of five G could change retail and clothing.
We asked the question what is the future of wearables
and connected clothes. I'm also lushan see you next time,
no matter what you're after. T Mobile for Business is
here with a network born mobile and built from the
ground up for the next wave of innovation from mobile
(24:57):
broadband to IoT, to work for mobility, and everything in between.
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as well as the dedicated, award winning customer service you'd
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