Kindred Futures and Zappar Collaborate on Mixed Reality

Sports enthusiasts are often deeply involved in the statistics and data generated by games, matches or races. While some teams and broadcasters do release this information, it is not always presented in a usable way. A collaboration between Zappar and Kindred Futures is hoping to change this using Mixed Reality (MR). The collaboration hopes to re-evaluate how sporting data is presented to audiences. Data and statistics are used by sports fans in various ways, from simple debates in the bar to creating fantasy sports leagues and, of course, gambling.

Kindred Futures and Zappar are building prototypes using data gathered from high-rpfile sporting events such as the 2017 Champions League Final and T20 Cricket between South Africa and England. The two demonstrations aim to provide a look at how sports data could be presented in the future, by providing an extra layer of data on top of reality. The creators hope this will show how users can be placed at the heart of the data by creating an immersive, interactive experience.

Zappar have been working with MR for quite some time, showcasing its smartphone-powered ZapBox MR device at the SXSW event in March last year. The device was an effort to bring mixed reality in reach of the majority of users, contrasting with expensive high-end devices such as the HoloLens.

Will Mace, Head of Kindred Futures, commented “Kindred Futures has always been committed to seeking out the most interesting and innovative companies to explore the future of gambling. Our largest brand, Unibet, has the tagline “Luck is no Coincidence” and this exploration with Zappar allows punters to discover and interact with data like neverbefore – leveraging Opta data to provide insights that can help them make more informed decisions. We’re very passionate about ensuring that audiences are given enough data to make sensible gaming decisions and think that our experiment with Zappar is an exciting step in the right direction.”

Jeremy Yates from Zappar commented “The main barrier of getting mixed reality to the mass market is the cost of new hardware. There’s an exciting future of data visualisation, with mixed reality providing an immersive and engaging way to both view and interact with information. This exploration is all part of our goal of democratising this technology. We’re very excited about partnering with Kindred to see how we can drive innovation and bring the future closer to today.”

A video demonstration of the technology can be viewed below. VRFocus will bring you further updates on this technology as it becomes available.