Someday in the not-too-distant future, when your favorite team reaches the Final Four or the Super Bowl, this is how you'll watch the game:
You'll purchase a virtual ticket, put on your 3-D virtual reality headset and settle into your "front row" seat for an immersive experience that will make you feel as if you're mere feet from the action while you're sitting on your couch, hundreds of miles from the arena or stadium.
You'll hear the television play-by-play announcers but also the ambient crowd noise. You'll control what you want to see, not what the network's cameras make you see.
Turn your head to the left or right and check out the corporate CEO or movie star sitting "next" to you in the front row. Gaze up into the crowd. Zoom in on your favorite player for an entire series of plays. Watch your own instant replays.
"You can be anywhere in the world and you can feel like you're in the front row of a Bucks game or a Celtics game or whatever," said Jeff Jonas, the chief commercial officer for Voke, a California-based company that is at the forefront of virtual reality-based viewing of live events.
If you think your 65-inch smart TV with 4K resolution is the ultimate way to watch a game, well, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Voke's media platform utilizes synchronized 180-degree stereoscopic cameras installed in front-row seats and at other vantage points in the stadium or arena. The camera "pods" function almost as eyes, letting the VR headset wearer see anything in the field of view at any time.
"We're capturing the whole panoramic feed and we're stitching it live," Jonas said. "So now you get to digitally control that experience. In normal broadcasts, the cameraman has to focus wherever the director wants the camera. This is unmanned. It's capturing everything all the time. So now in that unmanned environment, you get to digitally zoom, pan and do whatever you want."
This is all in the early stages of development. As Jonas said, "The VR market wasn't even there a year ago." But it's coming, just as surely as radio made way for television and bulky desktop PCs begat laptops, which begat tablets.
The technology already is available. Voke has partnerships with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Sacramento Kings and earlier this season VR live-streamed a Kings game to India (where Kings owner Vivek Ranadive was born).
"High-definition started in sports," Jonas said. "No one had HD TV sets. All of a sudden the broadcasters started broadcasting stuff in HD and people would see it in the store and they were like, 'I've got to have that.' So now we all have these huge sets. The same thing eventually is going to happen to VR. It's going to start in sports. It's going to trickle down and eventually everybody is going to have it.
"At least, that's what I think. That's what I'm betting on."
Jonas, 47, was so convinced that virtual reality was the future that he left Sportvision after 16 years to join Voke. At Sportvision, he helped bring a number of technological advancements to television, including the yellow first-down line in football.
Jonas isn't the only one betting on virtual reality. Two years ago, Mark Zuckerberg bought headset maker Oculus VR, a partner of Voke's, for more than $2 billion, though at the time the company had zero revenue.
"When you put (an Oculus headset) on, you enter a completely immersive, computer-generated environment, like a game or a movie scene or a place far away," Zuckerberg wrote in a post on -- what else? -- Facebook. "People who try it say it's different from anything they've ever experienced in their lives."
It's just a matter of time before Oculus' headset is available to the masses. Samsung's Gear VR already is on the market.
"A couple of things have to change," Jonas said. "The headsets are too big. And to be honest with you the quality of the headset experience isn't as good as it needs to be yet. But that's going to change. People are putting a lot of money into this.
"Once it's easy to use and the content is great, think about the social experience. I can have a buddy in Ohio and we can watch a Packers game together; you can be sitting next to him, watching and interacting."
Voke also is developing a VR app for smartphones. Jonas said a user likely would watch the linear feed on television and supplement the viewing experience with his or her phone, which he likened to a "magic window."
The VR applications are limitless: concerts (singer Ricky Martin is on Voke's board), Hollywood awards shows (imagine sitting next to Leonardo DiCaprio at the Oscars), gaming, education, security. But Jonas thinks the impetus for growth will come from sports events.
Voke won't be able to spend hundreds of millions on content rights but would partner with leagues and media entities to offer the VR experience. Users would buy virtual tickets from the rights-holders.
"People are spending $20,000 for a ticket to the Super Bowl to be in the front row," Jonas said. "What's a virtual ticket worth? Five percent of that? Fifty percent? I don't know."
The leagues and rights-holders stand to make millions, if not billions, from virtual ticketing. You think they're not on board?
Which begs the question: Why buy a ticket to actually attend the game when you can buy a virtual ticket and enjoy an immersive front-row experience from the comfort of your home?
That's the concern with every new viewing technology that comes along. But despite the proliferation of means and devices to watch games -- cable and satellite TV, computers, tablets, cellphones -- stadiums and arenas are still sold out.
Jonas said the virtual reality experience can't replace being in the arena, but "it comes as close as anybody has come so far. You put your headset on and you almost forget you're not there."
Hmm. Sounds like the perfect marketing catchphrase.
VR: Forget you're not there.
