Bringing the NBA to life with an immersive mobile experience

Creative technology company Unbnd partnered with the National Basketball Association (NBA) to produce a first-of-its-kind live, on-demand mobile app to view NBA games and explore player and team statistics. Agile Digital developed the cloud platform architecture and cloud-based technology solution to produce an innovative and successful virtual reality experience.

Client

Unbnd

Sector

Timeframe

18 months

Technology Themes

3D Immersive Technology Live Broadcast Media Mixed Reality

Background

Unbnd approached Agile Digital to develop the content platform to enable an enhanced, 3D real-time viewing app for the NBA. The app was designed to deliver a feature-rich immersive 360-degree mobile theatre experience via virtual reality headsets. The app features live games, NBA TV highlight reels, real-time game statistics, interactive branded content experiences, and NBA fan content.

Mission

In order to produce a successful real-time entertainment product, availability and responsiveness of the platform content were paramount. There were several key technical requirements to deliver a superb user experience during popular sporting events and to ensure compliance with syndicated media contract terms. The platform needed to deliver high-quality, low-latency live video with live stats that stay in-sync.

Measurable success factors were:

High availability – Minimal upgrade or failure downtime.

High scalability – The platform was required to handle a surge of sign-ups from Australia’s large NBA fan base and to support at least 250,000 concurrent users. Peak time application use needed to be supported while scaling down during the quiet periods to take advantage of cost savings achieved by only using resources required.

High agility – Development of the application was highly experimental, with requirements changing day-to-day. The supporting platform needed to be flexible enough to quickly change direction as the app developed.

Approach

Agile Digital collaborated with Unbnd designers and VR developers, taking responsibility for architecting and developing the front-end client as well as all backend systems in the platform. This included all content delivery systems, video transcoding pipelines, APIs, identity management and integration with third-party SaaS services. Additionally, Agile Digital developed the customer web portal and the content management system.

Result

In partnership with Unbnd, Agile Digital successfully delivered a brand new content platform that was on-time and on-budget, operational across iOS and Android.

The project has developed and proven a new way of viewing video content and its associated timecode data on mobile devices, with proof of concept applications underway for golf, supercars and soccer. This project has paved the way for a new breed of sporting entertainment using immersive technology and real-time data within the game viewing environment to vastly enhance the game viewing experience.