Ex-nba Commissioner Among VR Investors
LiveLike VR has announced a $5m investment, with former National Basketball Association (NBA) commissioner David Stern among the investors.
The VR company also announced a partnership with FOX Sports to produce a Ohio State and Oklahoma college football games in virtual reality.
Other investors include various venture capital firms such as Evolution Media Partners, Elysian Park Ventures, Courtside Ventures, Dentsu Ventures, Techstars Vetnures and a joint effort between sports agency Creative Artists Agency and investment firm TPG.
LiveLike has also done tests airing matches from the English Premier League, Roland Garros and the El Clasico in Spain. With Saturday’s airing of Ohio State and Oklahoma the biggest, with an early estimate of 37,000 people tuning into the VR experience on less than a week’s notice and behind a paywall.
“The die is cast,” Stern told Forbes. “Sports leagues and owners are falling head over heels in love with all forms of technology. There will only be more competition out there for the viewers’ eyeballs.”
The LiveLike team had previously won a competition run by TechCrunch called 1st And Future in which they got $50,000 in cash, meetings with NFL brass and Super Bowl tickets as judged at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business by investor Mary Meeker and Condoleezza Rice.
