But a local firm’s recent deal with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers – one that will see its interactive “crowd game” technology deployed at the team’s Quicken Loans Arena just in time for the playoffs – has it thinking it may have connected on a major score.
“There are a thousand arenas and outdoor venues in North America alone that have sufficient capacity,” says Mark Edwards, president of Bent 360 and maker of CrowdWave Games technology. It allows audience members at sporting events to physically control video games, from blasting pucks to shooting baskets, on screens parked above the playing surface.
Cameras placed around the venue soak up the crowd’s every movement, relaying data to a central server which controls the game on-screen.
After successfully debuting at the Urbandale Centre during Ottawa 67’s major junior hockey games last fall, Mr. Edwards says the company aggressively pitched to 60 arena-based pro sports teams in the NBA and NHL. He’s now at the contractual negotiation stage with a dozen, he says, and has had preliminary discussions with nearly half.
Students at Algonquin College also tested the technology back in September of last year.
“I’m a lifelong hockey player and father of hockey players, and it one day occurred to me that it would be really, really cool to get a large number of people involved in playing a game,” says the former managing director of Fuel Industries and cofounder of Amberwood Entertainment Corp.
The company deployed four of its $2,000-a-pop cameras at the Urbandale Centre, and says it will install eight of the high-tech devices at the Cleveland arena. Mr. Edwards describes the cameras as “rugged” and “compact” with a high resolution and high frame rate, as well as Ethernet connectivity.
The business case for Bent 360 comes in the form of annual fees that include technology licensing, he says, as well as selling new content to existing subscribers. But for pro sports teams, he explains, the real opportunity lies in sponsorship packages.
Mr. Edwards, who has a history in the entertainment and advertising industries, calls it a “premium sponsorship opportunity.
“(The teams) sell sponsored interaction” during game play, he says. “Every one of our apps is customized for the team and for the sponsor.”
The Cavaliers, meanwhile, licensed the tech for a little over a year and will install in March. Other deals signed between now and then, Mr. Edwards adds, will be deployed over the summer in time for the 2010 season.
Certainly, the company isn’t the only firm out there dabbling in “massively multiplayer crowd playing games.” Finland-based Uplause Ltd., which recently received a $54,000-euro grant from the Nordic Games Program fund, says it offers a similar technology.
And in 2007, MSNBC claimed to be the first to deploy an interactive crowd game in a cinema, turning several dozen moviegoers into “human joysticks” during the warmup for Spider-Man 3. Cisco Systems Inc. has also used similar crowd-based interfaces at its conferences.
As far as the Cavaliers are concerned, however, it’s an investment worth trying.”We’re a team that likes to do new, cool things, especially with technology,” says Amanda Greco, the Cavaliers’ director of game presentation. “We tried it out and we were hooked.”
Mr. Edwards, who declined to provide the cost of an installation, says a CrowdWave system could cost a team around $100,000 per year. But he maintains the revenue generated from sponsorships could bring in three times that amount each year.
“We expect teams to be able to use the technology in several different ways and several different times during the day.”
Mr. Edwards added that while outdoor stadiums such as baseball fields and soccer pitches are another potential market, the company is currently focused on arena-based sports such as hockey and basketball.
"So for the first two years, we're going to focus on the 60 arena teams… and we want to do that right. And the next step is to expand to outdoor stadiums."
