Stubhub Uses Virtual Reality For Seat Viewing

eBay subsidiary, StubHub, has announced that it will use Virtual Reality (VR) for ticket buyers to view available seats for the Final Four – a basketball competition in the US – with a similar option also appearing for those looking to purchase baseball tickets for AT&T Park, home of the San Fracisco Giants.

The experience will work from within the existing StubHub apps for iOS and Android. Customers will have the option of either using a smartphone or tablet and rotating it around to see different views, or popping their phone into a VR headset like Google Cardboard or Gear VR for a more immersive view.

“We didn’t want to do something just for fun or [as] a marketing gimmick,” said Marcus Shelksohn, StubHub’s head of product for mobile apps. “Are those seats that are closer to the court really worth the extra $50?”

StubHub isn’t alone, with other online ticket sellers, teams and venues also working to offer interactive seat maps using virtual reality.

Rival Rukkus is working on offering would-be seat buyers a chance to view potential seats using panoramic photography. StubHub, meanwhile, has opted for 3-D renderings over actual photography.

StubHub executives said the renderings offer a cleaner, smoother and potentially less costly to produce method to give ticket buyers a preview of their seats.

Devin Wenig, eBay’s CEO, says VR has been overhyped for a long time, but he has grown convinced that it is more than just a passing fad.

“It is not a feature; it is a platform,” he said. “The plan is to start to attack some of those more emotionally driven categories where the trust gap is hard to bridge.”

The StubHub experiment won’t be eBay’s last, with other endeavors planned for the core brand. The initial VR effort, which offers maps of Houston’s NRG Stadium and AT&T Park, was put together in a few weeks by fewer than a dozen people.

The article originally appeared here.