Sports are a lot different than they used to be.

Football players used to wear leather helmets. Basketball used to be played with a soccer ball. And when most sports were created, if you wanted to watch them you had to go find someone around you who was playing them.

Now, sports (and everything else) are at our fingertips 24-7.

But when you’re watching a game on TV or on your phone or tablet,  it’s not quite the same as actually being there. That’s why people still shell out large sums of money to go to live sporting events. But technology could be changing that.

No, Adam Levine. You could not be in the NBA.

Sitting courtside with your friend from anywhere in the world is pretty amazing. For now, it’s an extremely cool novelty. But if it follows the same trends as every other technology before it, VR and AR will become an expected offering soon enough. Most major sports leagues see the value of VR and AR for their respective sports.

Major League Baseball is integrating augmented reality into their At Bat App so fans can see stats and advanced player data at the games.

An NHL team, the San Jose Sharks, even made an augmented reality bobblehead of one of their players.

But VR and AR aren’t just for the fans. Athletes are using immersive tech to train and perform better.

A company called STRIVR has been training athletes with virtual reality since 2015. Teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Boston Red Sox, and the Chicago Blackhawks have all partnered with STRIVR to leverage the unique training possibilities of virtual reality.

Clemson Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney thinks VR training is a great tool for players every position.

“It has become so mainstream. There [are] so many different uses for it. It’s a good tool … Just another teaching tool.” 

During Clemson’s 2016 National title season, quarterback Deshaun Watson (now with the Houston Texans in the NFL) supplemented his on-field training with VR preparation. He was able to study a large library of different defensive techniques as if he were actually on the field.

Here’s STRIVR CEO Derek Belch talking with Kevin Howard of Stanford.

And technically, augmented reality has been used in the NFL since the 1990s to help viewers visualize the first down markers via the yellow line superimposed on the field.

And the NFL is upping their AR more and more every year. Next time you tune into Sunday Night Football, check out the AR graphics they’ve started to roll out.

So, enough with the meatspace sports. What about esports?

If you didn’t know, esports are arguably more popular than traditional sports. In 2017, Riot Games’ “League of Legends” had a record-breaking 364 million unique viewers during the mid-season invitational.

Super Bowl LI had 111.3 million viewers.

Might be time to take esports seriously if you haven’t already.

VR and AR certainly have a place in that proliferating arena. Games like Echo Arena, Space Pirate Trainer, and Beat Saber have increased the popularity of competitive VR gaming and attracted some of the world’s best gaming talent to immersive sports.

Unlike 2D gaming, it can be difficult to get a sense of what the athlete is experiencing while they’re in VR, so some VR sports fans have begun creating mixed reality green screen rooms. In fact, one of the most advanced MR content companies hails from right here in Springfield. Splitverse, a Stradling Creative Group project, is creating some of the highest quality mixed reality gaming content in the world — full stop. So, think about this for a minute. Esports are maybe more popular than traditional sports now and there’s what essentially amounts to the new ESPN right here in the Queen City.

Uh, rad.

Check out their latest video with Logan Theobald, currently ranked number five in the world in Beat Saber.

Pretty cool stuff, huh?

There’s also a National Association of Collegiate Esports. Student-athletes are getting scholarships to college for being exceptional gamers.

That’s true. Look it up.

So, if you haven’t gotten on board with the esports thing, now might be the time.

But even if you’re not ready for the brave new world, you can still consume traditional sports through immersive tech and only be a half Luddite.