Olympics in VR: NBC to Present 85 Hours of Virtual-Reality Content on Samsung Devices
NBC is leaning into virtual reality — the hot tech flavor of the moment — with plans to pump out some 85 hours of VR programming for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games.
Context & Ripple Effects
Sports VR has been building toward this since the NBA put cameras on its All-Star Game and became the first major sport to embrace VR, with that footage landing free on Samsung's Milk VR store for Gear VR. Since then, Oculus has stocked Gear VR with Netflix, Hulu, Twitch, and studio content, and Hulu committed to its own VR apps — leaving headsets short of one thing: marquee live events.
First-order effects
- Gear VR owners get 85 hours of Rio Olympics programming as exclusive-ish content, giving Samsung a differentiator for hardware it otherwise stocks with third-party apps.
- NBC gains a second screen for its biggest rights asset, testing whether Olympic spectacle can drive headset adoption the way it drives linear ratings.
Second-order effects
- Other US sports rights holders now face the template the NBA set and NBC is scaling: their leagues' footage becomes bargaining chips in device-maker content wars.
- Streaming players already on Gear VR — Netflix, Hulu, per the Oculus partnership — are effectively competing with live event exclusives for time on the same headset.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, premium sports become recurring anchor content that follows each headset generation — a line that runs from this Samsung deal through NBC's later VR partnership with Meta for Quest and the Google-NBC VR productions for subsequent games.
The trend: Broadcasters are turning tentpole live sports into the killer app that headset platforms compete to host, re-upping the same rights with each new device wave.