Improbable will host Major League Baseball virtual ballpark for celebrith match
Missed the GamesBeat Summit excitement? Don't worry! Tune in now to catch all of the live and virtual sessions here.
Improbable is taking its metaverse ambitions to baseball as it has built a new virtual ballpark to host Major League Baseball’s All-Star Celebrity Softball Game on Saturday.
The live physical game will take place on July 8, and Improbable will host a watch party for fans who can’t make it there in person via a watch party in a virtual stadium.
The game, sponsored by Corona, will take place live at T-Mobile Park in Seattle and feature celebrities like Olympic gold medalist Chloe Kim, singer Skylar Astin, urban music legend Yandel, NBA player Donovan Mitchell and MLB All-Star Ryan Howard. But the virtual event will feature as many as 20,000 or so people using Improbable’s M2 platform, said Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable, in an interview with GamesBeat.
“I think with sports in general, if we think about the kind of modern problem that baseball is wholeheartedly embracing, is that most fans don’t get to come to the game,” Narula said.
But being there is such an important part of the experience. When Narula grew up, he wasn’t a football fan. But what made him one was doing in a car with his brothers to the stadium and experiencing the excitement, “the human power,” of the fans.
“On Saturday, what we’re going to do is have a very large number of fans show up. And we’re going to see, in this first experiment, how it sounds and how people will be interacting with each other in a virtual stadium,” Narula said. “They will be watching a game within a watch party, but also, crucially, talking to each other.”
The concept for the sports league is to increase fan engagement with the introduction of its own virtual world,
Read more on venturebeat.com
