Samsung brings VR to Brazil Olympics
Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana Stadium is huge, with more than 78,000 seats from which lucky fans will watch the 2016 Olympic Opening Ceremonies.
Samsung Electronics Co. is betting the best place to watch is from your couch, with its virtual reality headset to transport you to Brazil.
The Korean electronics company has partnered with Comcast’s NBC-Universal and the Olympic Broadcasting Services to distribute the first VR Olympic broadcast of select events — including the opening and closing ceremonies, diving, basketball, track and field, and gymnastics.
VR is seen by many — like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — as the future of tech. It’s expected to change everything from gaming, to sports to communication and how people work.
The technology is still in its nascent stages, however, and no one has quite figured out how to make money from it yet. Samsung’s investment is training before the Winter Olympics come to its home turf in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018.
In some ways, Brazil is the perfect testing ground: the Olympics have historically been a showcase for new technologies — the Los Angeles Games introduced email to a wider audience in 1984 and Seiko debuted its Quartz timing system in Tokyo in 1964, according to the book Olympic Turnaround by Michael Payne.
“It makes sense for Samsung to get as much early experience with the technology as possible so that it can try to take the lead,” said Morningstar analyst Dan Baker. “Being ahead on the technology curve allows for better returns and profitability.”
But Samsung, which has been a top-level Olympic sponsor since 1998, faces a lot of hurdles.
While the Suwon-based company has exclusive VR rights through NBC to the 2016 games, only about 80 hours out of the 6,700 hours of programming will be broadcast with the technology. And they’ll air a day later. Viewers will also need Samsung’s Gear VR headset ($100), a Samsung Galaxy smartphone (about $850), a cable subscription and the NBC Sports app.
Residents of Brazil, where the games will be broadcast by media conglomerate Globo, will not have access to NBC’s VR video.