The EuroMillions Basketball League’s bpost cup final — the championship game for the highest Belgian professional basketball league’s cup competition — on Feb. 19 was reportedly the first Belgian basketball game to be live-streamed in 360-degree virtual reality.
The title game between BC Telenet Oostende and Hubo Limburg United was filmed using six conjoining GoPro devices that stitched and streamed the images directly to viewers. Sund, a Belgian digital agency, conducted the live stream in conjunction with Belgian Wi-Fi connectivity company In Any Event.
When using virtual reality headsets, viewers were able to experience a live, 360-degree panorama of the surrounding atmosphere, from a center court seat, at the Forest National arena in Brussels. BC Oostende pulled out a 76-60 win to notch its 18th Belgian Cup victory, the most out of any other Belgian professional basketball team.
Sund also holds the honor of being the first company to live stream a Belgian soccer match in 360-degree virtual reality when it did so in a September 2016 contest between SV Zulte Waregem and KV Kortrijk. While last September’s soccer stream was directed exclusively for potential clients — including the EuroMillions Basketball League — last month’s basketball stream was intended primarily for fan consumption, Sund’s Alain Belaen wrote.
Sund and In Any Event are in the process of building applications to their virtual reality streams that would display real-time player statistics in augmented reality to the viewer as they watch a game, according to Belaen.
