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Colleges take recruits on 3-D virtual tours

Stops on Ballena’s online virtual tour of USC include the weight room, and an indoor field, as well as other facilities on campus.
Photo by: SPECTRA TICKETING (2)
Virtual reality might be the wave of the future, but for now, it’s still cost-prohibitive for a lot of college athletic departments.

With that in mind, Spectra Ticketing and Fan Engagement has come out with a 3-D virtual tour that’s intended to be an alternative to VR for college recruiters. The tour, known as Virtual Recruiter, provides recruits and anyone else with online access a virtual tour of campus and athletic facilities at a cost to the school in the low five figures annually.

Ballena Technologies, a California-based company that last year was acquired by Spectra Ticketing, first developed the 360-degree technology as a way to show ticket buyers where their seats would be in a stadium. But at the request of Southern California, one of Ballena’s clients, the company adapted the 3-D visualization to do more than show the view from the seats. By using its technology and panoramic cameras to video facilities or other sites on campus, Ballena can provide the viewpoint of someone on the sidelines or running out of the tunnel at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

The virtual tour can be accessed on the school’s official athletics website, USCtrojans.com, where recruits can tour the Trojans’ weight room, locker rooms, major facilities and other landmarks like Heritage Hall.

While the 3-D tour is intended for coaches to show recruits, it’s available to anyone on the school’s website and does not require a password. One of the ancillary benefits of Virtual Recruiter is that the average fan can see behind the curtain at USC — the locker rooms, for example — to view facilities that typically aren’t seen by the public.

It’s not the immersive experience that VR provides, but Ballena’s panoramic shots give viewers a 360-degree look at any facility.

USC’s coaches like it because it’s easily accessed online and it adapts to tablets and smartphones, said Jose Eskenazi, the Trojans’ associate athletic director for marketing, who initiated the idea for Virtual Recruiter and took it to Ballena.

“We were looking for a better way to visually showcase our facilities than the static photos you usually see in a photo gallery,” Eskenazi said. “The photos just don’t provide you with the same experience as a virtual tour.”

It’s not that Spectra is looking to create competition for virtual reality. In fact, Spectra is using Ballena’s technology to forge a new line of VR products to go with Virtual Recruiter and its other 3-D products.

Kip Nelson, a senior account manager at Ballena’s offices in Alameda, Calif., said VR “is still in an infancy stage” and hasn’t been perfected.

“If a coach is recruiting an athlete in the home, Virtual Recruiter can be a very powerful tool,” Nelson said. “It definitely delivers the wow.”

Southern Cal was the first school on board, but UCLA and Liberty University also have bought the product as a recruiting tool. Spectra is signing schools to multiyear deals.

“It’s an arms race and schools need all the tools to get athletes on campus,” said Craig Ricks, Spectra’s vice president of marketing. “The recruits are all very visually focused, and this is a product that provides unique images.”

About 50 colleges use Ballena products, mostly the 3-D seating charts for tickets sales and seat relocation. It also has several clients in the major sports leagues.

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