As entertainment platforms continually strive to bring the most innovative and ingenious ways of bringing live sports and gaming to your fingertips, new and emerging technology inevitably plays a part.
While we have already witnessed the marvel of the internet and how it has changed our world, shaping multiple avenues of our existence, virtual reality seems to be the next new technology that the gambling sector and global football industry have their sights on.
But how exactly does a fabricated version of reality have any sort of appeal to the vast majority of us?
Virtual Reality Casinos
Although this isn’t an established area of the gambling world, it could be a while until it finds a considerable market or is relegated to the abyss of history.
The likelihood is that virtual casino gaming will be an emerging market as we head toward the latter part of this decade. They offer everything you can find in a casino.
Still, with the added reality of feeling as though you’re immersed within a physical building, this is an unchartered terrain for digital providers.
Usually, they have to compete with land-based casinos directly, and it’s impossible to recreate the aura and mystique of a land-based establishment. However, this is why virtual reality is such a colossal game-changer.
A virtual reality casino will utilize the power of the internet to bring you an immersive experience.
Regardless of the casino games you enjoy, you can find equivalents within virtual reality games, such as roulette, poker, blackjack, and slot machine gaming.
While it is still in its primitive stages, many people within the gambling and technology sectors are incredibly optimistic about the possibilities that this technology could facilitate and believe it could prise land-based casino customers away from their traditional gambling destinations.
Where Does Football Enter The Conversation?
Casinos are more straightforward than football from a virtual reality perspective.
While it is difficult to recreate the feel of a casino, it is objectively much more challenging to create the atmosphere and feel of a football game from inside a stadium.
Football fans travel worldwide to watch their favorite teams, especially within some of the top leagues in Europe, with teams like Liverpool having their most passionate fans outside of the city, in places like Denmark.
Providing fans with a complete entertainment package is now the essential selling point for many football clubs in Europe’s top leagues. The top 10 most prominent clubs in Europe are worth billions of dollars, attracting people from far and wide and promising an unforgettable experience.
This isn’t a unique selling point; this is now part of the broader package for a league that has transformed from a quintessentially working-class sport in England to a multi-billion dollar fantasy football league.
How virtual reality comes to fruition within this perfectly pieced-together package is another question entirely.
For many billionaire owners operating in the Premier League, this technology is the next conquest for many within this industry who strive to continue using innovations to maximize the customer experience, with many hospitality fans paying thousands of dollars to get a glimpse of their favorite stars.
Football Video Gaming
Although video gaming isn’t strictly virtual reality, it is the first move into a world where the professional game has become a virtual commodity purely for entertainment.
Over the last 25 to 30 years, football video gaming has brought virtual reality to millions of people worldwide, and although it isn’t the immersive virtual reality headsets like the expensive ones recently unveiled by Apple.
Even though these headsets might not fly off the shelves as some initially thought, it shows a significant shift in the rhetoric for these companies.
Gone are the days when virtual reality was just a sidenote for tech bosses at the end of a meeting or a bit of water cooler talk at a press conference.
With billions of dollars earmarked for research and development in this field, the football industry already uses virtual assistance, and it is a technology that has been implemented for many years, first used internationally at the 2018 World Cup.
Conclusion
As professional football continues to move toward technology, and with the outrageous sums of money involved in the beautiful game, it seems like technology, like virtual reality, is on a collision course with the world’s most popular sport.
As it is so new, there’s still a lot of speculation about how it could change the sport over the next decade.
However, there will have to be quite a shift away from the traditional game for virtual reality to pose any sort of risk or to pull audiences away from the beautiful game.
Although virtual reality will change many aspects of entertainment, and an exciting new world lies ahead, pending any further colossal developments, specifically in virtual reality and the football world, there will be a significant gap to breach.
