On November 10 at an awards ceremony in New York City, the PGA Tour won “Best Use of Virtual Reality Technology” at the Cynopsis Digital Model D Awards. The award came from their PGA TOUR LIVE VR coverage from THE PLAYERS Championship. The PGA TOUR was the first sports league to stream “360” live to Twitter.
THE PLAYERS live VR experience was done in collaboration with Intel and was produced with Intel True VR technology, bringing fans closer to the action than ever before with three concurrent VR camera positions during competition. One camera was placed on the 17th tee, while one camera on the walkway from tee box to the green, and another camera was mounted in the water next to the island green.
The Tour made the VR experience live to fans via Samsung Gear VR headsets through the “PGA TOUR VR Live” app available on the Oculus store. It was also available exclusively on Twitter and Periscope for those that didn’t have a VR headset.
In September, the PGA TOUR and Intel announced an exclusive relationship to produce and globally distribute live virtual reality and live 360 video at six PGA TOUR events in 2017 and 2018.
