Premier League Player Puts Gamers Onto a Real Soccer Field

UK VR startup Rezzil — which is behind VR-enabled drills that pro athletes use — has developed a game that drops players right into the middle of Premier League soccer games.

Why It Hits: As sports leagues and media companies search for more ways to immerse audiences in matches, rolling out a feature that allows people to feel like what it is to relive games and play alongside their favorite players could be… well… a game-changer.

Between the Matches: Wired got a first look at Premier League Player, which is still in the testing phase and will kick off in August at the start of the next season.

• Using VR headsets, players are dropped into one of the 20 playable English Premier League stadiums, where they are then tasked with recreating plays — passes, headers, penalty kicks, shots on goal, goal blocks — from actual games.
• Currently, players “kick” by swinging their arms as they hold a headset, but the company is working on a way where people will actually be able to kick with their feet.
• As you play, recreations of players executing moves they did in the game will appear alongside you — a feat captured by on-field iPhones and rendered by computer-vision programs that capture 10,000 points on each player’s body.

The Future: The “real killer application,” per Wired, will be when the game allows players to change the course of past games. For example, say your favorite team failed to score a winning goal. Players could try their hand at making the goal and winning the game. Of course, that’s revisionist history, but that sort of hypothetical gameplay is catnip for diehard fans. Expect every league to get in on Rezzil’s technology to develop a new kind of media-rights deal.