The NBA is investing in Gym Class VR and acquiring an equity stake in the company through its new multiyear licensing deal with the virtual reality basketball game. Branded NBA team courts from all 30 teams will be added into Gym Class, as well as team-branded digital apparel and accessories for users to dress their in-game avatars with NBA gear and play with team-branded basketballs. Gym Class has more than one million downloads and ranks as the most popular sports game on Meta Quest headsets, beating out StatusPro’s Pro Era football VR game licensed by the NFL and the PGA Tour-licensed VR app Golf+. “[The NBA] discovered us pretty early, even before we fundraised while we were in beta,” Gym Class co-founder Paul Kasten told SBJ Tech. “They had played the game; we have been chatting with them for a very long time. We’re super excited to get this first licensed product onto Quest and the biggest sports community in VR here at Gym Class. We’re excited to see how the community responds and hopefully build the community from there.” IRL Studios, the Austin-based developer of Gym Class, has secured nearly $9M in funding with NBA player investments from Kevin Durant’s 35 Ventures, Andre Iguodala, and Danny Green alongside VC firms Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator.
GETTING IN THE GAME: Gym Class will sell an in-game NBA Bundle starting at $19.99 and includes a virtual replica of an NBA team’s court, a team-branded basketball and two sets of team-branded clothing such as shoes, socks, shorts, t-shirts, headbands and wristbands -- with the league and IRL Studios having a revenue-sharing agreement. Meta has a separate existing deal with the NBA to license NBA League Pass games for streaming in its VR Quest headsets. In Gym Class, headset-wearers can join courts with their friends and physically squat, jump and perform other physical movements to be replicated in the game’s virtual basketball court. The game has free-to-play and premium paid gaming modes.
