The XR Sports Alliance (XRSA) has announced the third cohort of members. The new members include Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), the Vegas Golden Knights, the Pro Climbing League, FansXR, Focal Point VR, and Nexus Studios, bringing the total member count up to 22.
Founded by Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies and Host Broadcast Services (HBS) in 2024, the XRSA is a strategic initiative designed to accelerate time-to-market and commercialization of XR sports services through collaboration among its members.
The latest XRSA cohort brings together leaders from across the sports, technology and XR ecosystems. It includes sports intellectual property (IP) owners MLSE, one of the world's premier sports and entertainment companies, the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights; and Pro Climbing League, a professional competition series for the world’s strongest climbers; FansXR, a computer vision sports and entertainment company that provides live multicast fan controlled broadcast views for gamification; Focal Point VR, specialists in live ultra-high-resolution stereo and immersive video technology; and Nexus Studios, a Creative and Technology Studio.
Michael Lantz, CEO, Accedo Group, commented: “With this latest cohort of members, the XR Sports Alliance adds new testbed opportunities and capabilities—from immersive video capture to interactive fan engagement and gamified experiences. As the XRSA grows from strength to strength, these new members will further advance our mission to build frameworks for XR sports services through deep collaboration across technology, media, and sports organizations.”
The XRSA’s experimentation framework has now been deployed for the first time with E1, the world’s first all-electric raceboat Championship.
The deployment served as a testbed to explore how immersive XR content can enhance fan engagement and create new monetization opportunities across live sports—testing over 20 different immersive camera angles to capture the action in entirely new ways, according to XRSA. XRSA says it will share key learnings from this collaboration at Sportel Monaco, Oct. 20-23, including insights on production workflows, cross-partner collaboration, and how to scale XR sports experiences from pilot to large-scale service.
Laurence Boyd, chief content and product officer, E1, added: “At E1, we wanted to be part of the XR Sports Alliance to share our experience to date, as well as being a test-bed for cutting-edge tech that can engage the next generation of fans. The test deployment has demonstrated some of what is possible and we’re excited to continue to push the boundaries of technology to develop engaging fan experiences that help to grow our audience and develop the next generation of Champions of the Water.”
Accedo’s Lucy Trang Nguyen will speak about the XRSA’s first experimentation deployment with E1 Series at a panel session at Sportel Monaco, Tuesday, Oct. 21, at 10:50. In this session, Trang Nguyen and Laurence Boyd, chief content and product officer of E1 Series, will share valuable learnings from XRSA’s work with this experimentation deployment.
