Real Madrid’s Negotiations with Apple for Immersive Experiences: Be at the best seat in the Stadium

Vision Pro users know that Spatial* and, above all, Immersive** Video is one of the platform’s strengths, content has been relatively scarce but with constant additions. Apple is reportedly working on a big project: upgrading a popular sports stadium with the tech necessary for live-streaming games in immersive video on Vision Pro.

Negotiations may enable Apple to live stream sports in immersive video

Apple’s Vision Pro provides various unique experiences you can’t get on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. But one of the most impressive is immersive video, and it’s especially eye-opening with sports.

The problem, as of now, is that there is very little sports content available in immersive video. And what’s there is never live, only short highlight reels released months after the fact.

Apparently, Apple has a solution for that: building advanced tech into a popular stadium’s ongoing upgrades.

As reported by Marca, Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez shed light on the ongoing negotiations the club is having with Apple.

Real Madrid’s famous Santiago Bernabéu stadium is in the midst of a costly transformation, and Pérez recently addressed the issue of the stadium regularly running out of capacity.

The solution: live immersive video streams for Vision Pro.

Here’s Pérez’s translated quote:

Everyone wants to come to the Santiago Bernabéu, and that’s why we are negotiating with Apple to be able to wear glasses and watch the match as if you were at the stadium. It would be the Infinite Santiago Bernebéu.

Understandably, Pérez doesn’t go into detail about the technical specifics of what’s being discussed with Apple. But based on what he does say, it’s clear that live immersive video for Vision Pro users is in mind.

Successful immersive test case could lead to major interest from other sports

Apple’s major investment in soccer is clearly leading to some open doors for the company in its quest to build out immersive video for sports.

Real Madrid’s timely renovations at Santiago Bernabéu may be another part of the stars aligning for Apple too.

A live-streamed soccer match in immersive video would absolutely be a killer feature for many Vision Pro owners. More exciting, though, would be the potential for expanding the video capture equipment into other stadiums and sports around the world.

If Apple can prove how compelling immersive sports can be with Real Madrid, it could see a lot of interest come its way from other teams and even other sports worldwide.

Even if in the end what they launch is Spatial Video instead of Immersive Video, it will be much better than today’s sports in Vision Pro which consists of 2d video image with added a 3D map of the match/race.

*Spatial Video refers to video with depth, like a 3D movie but with enhacements. It can be used for distant and near subjects.

*Immersive Video also refers to video with depth, but in this case the video surrounds the spectator and allows to really feeling being in that place, it is more apropiate to real scale first person recordings. But is not effective for general planes of the match or distant players.