Here’s How FOX Sports Plans To Blow Your Mind With Super Bowl Broadcast – Forbes

With an audience expected to exceed 100 million, FOX Sports is pulling a number of new tricks out of their hat for the Super Bowl to make the broadcast unlike any other.

The technology FOX Sports will employ includes over 100 cameras (35 for studio, pre-and-post game, plus 70 for the game, itself), and will allow it to present the Patriots-Falcons clash, which begins at 6:30 PM ET, in ways never seen before.

FOX Sports’ “Virtual Suite” as part of Super Bowl LI programming (image courtesy FOX Sports)

For one, FOX Sports is working with its FOX Sports Lab initiative to provide Super Bowl LI with virtual reality highlights and replay via LiveLike. The presentation can be viewed using the newly released FOX Sports VR App. The views via VR will be come from six cameras and fans will not need to authenticate to check it out (cord cutters, rejoice!).

For those who don’t have VR capability and wish to stream the game, it is also being presented via FOX Sports and will be able to watch pre-and-post game programming, as well as the Super Bowl without the need for authentication. Fans can watch the game via the FOX Sports Go app, as well as online at FOXSportsGo.com. The game will be streamed to iOS, Android and Amazon tablets or through connected devices, including Apple TV, Roku, Android TV, Chromecast and Amazon Fire.

One cool add for this year’s Super Bowl is the “Be the player” view, a new project by FOX Sports that will allow for field-of-vision perspective that will allow one to see the point of view from the player’s perspective on the field. Yet FOX will have no cameras mounted on any of the players on the field.

One trick that FOX will also roll out is the use of augmented reality via 3D graphics and the cabled Skycam that hovers over the field for the use of the “yellow line” for first downs. 3D will be used on or over the field during play, extending the use of graphics that has been seen prior for everything from play clock to down and distance to 1st down.

FOX Sports has also rolled out a location called “Discovery Green” as part of programming leading up to the game. As part of this programming, they’ll have 35 HD cameras, as well as the use of a 50-foot Technocrane and a Stradacrane. As part of Discovery Green, FOX Sports will pull in the use of two touchscreens among two of the sets; one used for social media content, another with augmented reality technology for a unique Super Bowl picks feature.