Sports first. Tech second. That order matters.
I graduated from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State in December 2022 with a degree in Sports Business. That timeline matters more than it looks. The four years I spent in school were the same four years VR sports streaming nearly died and then started coming back. I watched it happen from the fan side, not the boardroom side. That's the whole reason this newsletter exists.
Here's the problem I'm writing about. Sports used to mean sitting next to your friends. Then everyone graduated, took jobs in different cities, and started watching alone. The group chat became the replacement. Live texting through a game, arguing about a bad call over text instead of in person, that became normal. It's fine. It's also not the same thing, and it was never going to be.
That gap is about to close, and not with a bigger TV or a better group chat. With a headset. Put it on, open an app, and you're sitting courtside with your friend in Denver and your friend three miles from your own house who didn't feel like driving. Same room. Same seats you couldn't afford at the real arena. A fraction of the cost of the ticket, the parking, and a beer that costs more than it should.
I'm not writing this as someone who came from VR and learned sports along the way. I came from sports first. I grew up on it, studied the business of it, and I'm building the technical fluency on purpose because the people building this technology mostly don't understand fandom the way people who grew up inside it do. That's the gap I'm trying to fill, both in the industry and in this newsletter.
Epic Seat Immersive tracks the business of immersive sports before it becomes obvious. The deals, the companies, the money, and what it means for fans who just want to watch the game together again while sitting in the best seats in the house.
