Targeting the “enthusiasm over dignity” marketing niche where “rabid sports fans” and “early tech adopters ” intersect, TNT has announced that it’s partnering with streaming company NextVR to broadcast an upcoming basketball game via the quasi-futuristic splendor of virtual reality. The NBA-winning Golden State Warriors are playing their season opener against New Orleans tonight, you see, and the lucky owners of Samsung’s GearVR technology will be able to follow along at home, in the relatively comfort of someone sitting around with a smartphone strapped awkwardly to their face. (GearVR being pretty much a set of goggles that you slide a Samsung tablet into to provide the screen.)
It’s not just the game that’ll be broadcast, though; viewers will also be able to watch the Warriors receive their championship rings, with TNT apparently indifferent to all the fights it’ll be provoking between basketball fans and connoisseurs of ostentatious jewelry, clawing at each other to get a 3D look at the players’ fancy bling.
Tonight’s game is just the latest in Turner’s experiments with VR tech; the network previously broadcast a recent Democratic Debate in the format (allowing viewers the normally in-person-only experience of getting lost in the wiry labyrinth of Bernie Sanders’ hair). The Warriors game will hopefully provide a little more action for investors in the new technology, in that it will actually feature some signs of currently-living human life.