NextVR signs five-year deal with Live Nation to broadcast concerts in virtual reality
NextVR is teaming up with music promoter Live Nation to offer hundreds of concerts in virtual reality. Could this be the non-gaming experience the industry has been waiting for? — NextVR
Context & Ripple Effects
NextVR is extending beyond sports into music: the five-year Live Nation deal turns hundreds of promoted concerts into VR broadcasts, giving the startup a second major content vertical after its NBA partnership began putting a weekly game in VR. For Live Nation, which controls the supply of touring acts, it is a way to license its catalog into an emerging format without building the capture pipeline itself.
The move fits a pattern in the corpus: StubHub had already tested letting ticket buyers preview seats in VR, and years later Live Nation would again experiment with immersive formats through Snap's AR experiences at concerts and festivals. The throughline is a promoter treating virtual layers on live events as a recurring product line rather than a one-off stunt.
First-order effects
- Hundreds of Live Nation-promoted concerts gain a VR distribution channel, making NextVR the default capture-and-broadcast partner for the world's largest concert promoter over the term of the deal.
- Fans who cannot attend physically get a paid way to experience shows, while NextVR secures exclusive live-music inventory to sit alongside its sports broadcasts.
Second-order effects
- Rival promoters and ticketing players face pressure to match the format — StubHub's earlier VR seat-preview experiment shows the commerce side of live events was already moving toward immersive previews, and exclusive VR rights become a differentiator in artist and venue deals.
- Capture-technology vendors such as 8i, whose light-field stitching platform targets exactly this kind of volumetric video, see demand for production tooling rise as promoters commission regular VR broadcasts rather than demos.
Third-order effects
- If the model holds, live-event economics split into two products — the in-venue ticket and the licensed immersive broadcast — with promoters like Live Nation monetizing the same tour twice and headset install base (the Oculus Rift and Go support NextVR added by 2018) becoming the real constraint on audience size.
- The longer arc runs from VR broadcasts toward mixed-format fan engagement: Live Nation's later AR work with Snap suggests the end state is a stack of digital layers on every live event, negotiated as rights alongside traditional broadcasting.
The trend: Live entertainment is being re-cut as licensable immersive content, with promoters like Live Nation selling their event catalogs into successive formats — VR first, then AR — as headset adoption allows.