United for Immersion: How the XR Sports Alliance Is Shaping Sports’ Future
- Skyrim.AI Expert Series
- 2 days ago
- 10 min read
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Sports fans have always craved deeper engagement, and a new wave of extended reality (XR) technologies promises to deliver it. Imagine experiencing a live match not just on a screen, but all around you – with 3D replays, holographic overlays, and virtual vantage points. Achieving this level of immersion at scale will take more than cool gadgets; it demands unity across the sports and tech industries. Enter the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), a groundbreaking coalition that is bringing together diverse players to accelerate the rollout of immersive sports experiences. In an arena long marked by fragmented experiments, XRSA is fostering the cross-industry collaboration needed to turn XR sports from novelty into mainstream reality.
What Is the XR Sports Alliance?
XR Sports Alliance logo, highlighting founding partners Accedo, HBS, and Qualcomm.
Launched in mid-2024, the XR Sports Alliance was founded by three industry heavyweights – Accedo, Qualcomm, and HBS (Host Broadcast Services) – with a mission to bridge the sports and XR sectors 1, 2. Accedo contributes expertise in video streaming and user experience, Qualcomm brings its Snapdragon XR hardware and software know-how, and HBS provides deep roots in sports broadcasting 3. Together, these founding members set out to “accelerate knowledge gathering, technological advancement and time-to-market for XR sports services” 4, by creating a collaborative ecosystem. In essence, XRSA is a strategic alliance aimed at fast-tracking the development and commercialization of XR in sports 5.
Since its launch, XRSA’s ranks have expanded to include a first wave of innovators across the sports-tech spectrum. Notable members now joining the alliance include:
Google
Red Bull
French Soccer League
Premier Lacrosse League
FISE
Lenovo
Stats Perform
E1 Series
Deutsche Telekom & T-Mobile US
XREAL
Ateme
These organizations, among others, have signed on to contribute to XRSA’s efforts 6. By design, the alliance is open to a broad range of partners – from sports leagues and broadcasters to tech startups and hardware makers – all united by a shared goal of advancing immersive sports experiences. “The XRSA was born from a shared vision. Our ambition is to build a powerful collective of passionate leaders and experts from both the sports and XR industries, all committed to advancing the commercialization of XR sports services. Every member is important for how we shape our end-to-end experimentation framework and how we lay the foundation for scalable technology and sustainable XR business models,” explains Michael Lantz, CEO of Accedo 7. In short, XRSA serves as a neutral innovation hub where companies can collaboratively develop the end-to-end framework for state-of-the-art XR sports services 8, from immersive video production and distribution to data-driven user experiences – and bring those services to market faster than any one player could alone.
Solving an Ecosystem Puzzle
Why was an alliance like XRSA needed? Simply put, the XR sports ecosystem has been a puzzle with many missing pieces. Key challenges have been holding back the industry’s immersive ambitions:
Fragmentation and lack of standards: There’s no universal playbook for XR or volumetric video in sports – even basic definitions are inconsistent. (For example, sports federations each define “XR rights” differently, and advertising in virtual environments remains uncharted territory.) As one expert noted, these definitions and approaches are “all very fragmented and scattered over the market” 9. No common standards means duplicated effort and incompatible solutions.
High R&D costs, unclear ROI: Developing immersive experiences is expensive, and it’s not yet certain when large audiences will adopt XR hardware. “It’s no secret that there [are not a huge] amount of headsets in the market,” observes Johannes Franken, HBS’s Director of Digital, pointing out that the limited user base makes it hard to justify big investments 10. Early XR sports demos (like VR highlights at past World Cups) were mostly marketing experiments, with “roadblocks to create a viable business case” for broader deployment 11. In short, the return on investment for immersive sports has been uncertain.
Siloed innovation: Until now, tech vendors, broadcasters, and leagues have often worked in isolation on XR pilots. These one-off projects generated buzz but rarely lasted. Franken notes that while previous VR/AR trials were useful proofs of concept, “solving those roadblocks can only be achieved as a group” 11. No single stakeholder can tackle the full picture – content, devices, networks, and monetization – alone.
The XR Sports Alliance offers a compelling solution to this puzzle: unite the pieces through collaboration. Instead of each company struggling with XR in a vacuum, XRSA provides a platform for shared experimentation and knowledge exchange. Members pool their expertise and co-develop solutions, reducing duplication and aligning on common standards. In fact, XRSA’s formation was predicated on the idea that the XR industry must move forward together. A case in point comes from Skyrim.AI (an XRSA member), which found that “the lack of interoperability standards in spatial media required a collaborative approach to ensure seamless integration across production and distribution pipelines” 12. By sharing data, insights, and even roadmap priorities, XRSA members can collectively de-risk innovation – learning what works and what doesn’t far more efficiently than any one player could. The alliance has even established a global user-testing framework to gather data from XR deployments and circulate “Lessons Learned” reports among members 13, so each trial benefits the whole group. In essence, XRSA turns a fragmented, high-cost endeavor into a team sport: a coordinated effort to build the standards, business models, and best practices that will underpin an immersive sports future 7. It’s a powerful example of cross-industry thinking: when everyone contributes a piece, the XR puzzle comes together.
Initiatives and Experiments Underway
Forming an alliance is only the beginning, the real momentum comes from collective action. In 2025, XRSA has moved swiftly from vision to hands-on experimentation. The alliance’s members have launched a series of trials and pilot projects to turn immersive concepts into practical reality. According to HBS’s digital team, the early 2025 deployments involve “extensive experimentation with both non-live and live spatial video formats” and tests of “various immersive fan features and spatial advertising” 14. In other words, XRSA isn’t just talking about XR; it’s actively building and testing it. Key initiatives include:
Spatial video trials: Capturing sports action in volumetric 3D video, both in controlled settings and at live events. By experimenting with “non-live and live spatial video formats” 15, the alliance is learning how to produce, compress, and stream holographic video of games. These trials will help establish how to deploy volumetric cameras in stadiums and deliver 3D content to viewers without blowing through bandwidth or budgets.
Immersive fan feature prototypes: Developing and testing augmented reality overlays and interactive XR applications for fans. Alliance members are trying out features like virtual stadium environments, AR player stats and graphics layered on live games, and multi-angle XR replays that let viewers experience key moments from any perspective. The goal is to gauge how fans react to these immersive fan features – measuring engagement, enjoyment, and what actually enhances the viewing experience. (Imagine wearing AR glasses that project a life-size replay of a goal into your living room, or using your phone to place a virtual basketball court on your table and watch the play unfold from a bird’s-eye view.)
Spatial advertising pilots: Exploring new revenue models by integrating brands into immersive experiences. This includes testing “spatial advertising” formats 14 such as virtual billboards in AR, 3D product models placed in a fan’s field of view, or other mixed-reality sponsorships. Through these pilots, the alliance is examining how advertisers can reach fans in XR environments in ways that feel organic and valuable. The findings could inform standards for future AR/MR sponsorship deals – for example, determining how a “virtual can of Red Bull” in an AR view compares to a traditional stadium sign 9.
Critically, all of these experiments are feeding into XRSA’s shared knowledge base. The alliance has created a user testing framework to collect data on viewer behavior, content quality, and workflow integration from each trial 13. For instance, how long do fans engage with an interactive 3D replay? Does adding AR graphics increase viewership on a broadcast, or distract from it? What technical bottlenecks arise when streaming volumetric video in real time? By pooling results, XRSA members can iterate rapidly and make data-driven decisions on what immersive features are ready for prime time. From isolated pilots to scalable models – that’s the trajectory. Lessons from early trials are distilled into best practices and technical guidelines, accelerating the transition from one-off demos into repeatable, production-ready solutions. It’s telling that within a year of its founding, XRSA went from concept to coordinating live XR sports trials – a timeline one could envision illustrated in an alliance innovation timeline graphic. This rapid progress underscores how collective effort is speeding up innovation. Each success (or failure) in the 2025 experiments informs the next, bringing the industry a step closer to making immersive sports experiences a routine part of broadcasts and events.
Industry Impact: Accelerating Adoption at Scale
What does all this collaboration mean for the sports industry in the long run? In a word: acceleration. By tackling XR’s challenges together, the XR Sports Alliance is paving the way for immersive tech to be adopted at scale much faster than it otherwise would. The potential impacts span the entire value chain of sports media, and they’re truly game-changing.
For fans and broadcasters, we could soon see enhancements like AR replays becoming a staple of live sports. Instead of being limited to the camera angles the director chooses, viewers might summon their own interactive replays – viewing that winning goal or controversial call from any angle via a volumetric capture. In fact, XRSA member Skyrim.AI “envisions a future where every major sporting event is captured spatially in 3D, providing fans with photorealistic, broadcast-quality representations of players and games”16. That means a fan with an AR headset (or a phone) could drop a full 3D model of a live play onto their coffee table and inspect it as if they were on the field. These kinds of features have been technically possible in isolated cases; the alliance could make them widely available and standardized across many sports and platforms.
Behind the scenes, the alliance’s work on formats and workflows will yield industry standards – for example, agreed-upon best practices for volumetric video capture and compression in live events. Today, if a league wants to experiment with XR, they must figure out where to place 360° cameras, how to integrate spatial feeds with traditional broadcasts, how to handle data loads, etc., mostly by trial and error. In the near future, thanks to XRSA’s collective R&D, there could be well-defined blueprints for all this. Sports organizations will know exactly how to add a volumetric camera rig to their venue and plug it into a cloud-based XR pipeline, because the alliance has already proven what works. Shared R&D means everyone from small startups to big broadcasters can adopt immersive tech with lower costs and risks, accelerating market penetration.
Importantly, XRSA’s cross-industry makeup ensures that new immersive solutions have broad device and network support from day one. With Qualcomm and XREAL in the mix, XR experiences are being optimized for the latest AR/VR hardware and 5G-enabled devices; with Deutsche Telekom and other telcos involved, considerations like network bandwidth and edge computing for XR are part of the strategy. This synergy helps avoid the classic chicken-and-egg problem – ensuring that as content becomes available, the devices and infrastructure to consume that content are ready too. The result: when immersive experiences hit the market, they can reach a wide audience across different platforms, rather than being confined to a single proprietary system.
Industry leaders increasingly view these spatial experiences as central to the future of fan engagement, not just tech for tech’s sake. At XRSA’s launch, the founding members held a panel on how “immersive sports experiences will transform the future of fan engagement” 17. This sentiment is echoed by pioneers like HBS’s Johannes Franken, who believes that embracing XR is key to appealing to the next generation of fans. “Spatial experiences are core to the future of fan engagement,” Franken emphasizes –meaning tomorrow’s fans will expect interactive, immersive options that go beyond passive viewing. If the alliance’s vision comes to fruition, a decade from now we might look back on flat 2D broadcasts the way we look at black-and-white TV – charming relics of a less immersive era. And we won’t get there in a decade without working together now. Through XRSA’s collaborative efforts, features that once sounded like science fiction (holographic replays, AR commentary, virtual courtside seats) are rapidly moving toward reality, poised to roll out at scale across sports. The immersive future is coming into focus, and it’s arriving faster because everyone is rowing in the same direction.
Looking Ahead: A Call for Collaboration
While the XR Sports Alliance has made impressive strides in its first year, it’s clear that the journey to fully immersive sports has only begun – and there’s plenty of room on this bandwagon. In fact, XRSA was conceived as an open initiative and is actively inviting more stakeholders to join the cause. “We will continue to grow the membership over the coming months and welcome interest from companies across the ecosystem,” says HBS’s Sylvain Lebreton, “both those wishing to serve as contributing members, as well as observing members.” 18 Whether you’re a major sports league, a regional broadcaster, a device manufacturer, or a startup with a novel fan-tech idea, the alliance offers a platform to collaborate, learn, and help shape standards for XR in sports. Contributing members can participate directly in pilot programs and working groups, while observing members can gain early insights and provide feedback. Either way, it beats going it alone.
The overarching message of XRSA is a call to think collectively. Sports tech investors, for instance, might consider how pooling resources in an alliance can lower the risk of innovation and expand the total market for immersive experiences (a rising tide lifts all boats). Broadcasters and rights holders can see XRSA as a sandbox to experiment safely and set common tech standards before investing in full-scale rollouts. Telecom and infrastructure providers, too, have a seat at this table to ensure networks are ready for the data demands of volumetric video. The alliance is effectively saying: let’s solve the hard problems together now, so that immersive sports can scale up for everyone’s benefit. By aligning on open frameworks and shared learnings, XRSA is shortening the path to commercialization for XR solutions that none of the members could reliably bring to market on their own. It’s collaboration not for its own sake, but as a strategic accelerator for an entire industry.
As we look ahead, one can envision more companies, organizations, and even researchers joining XRSA to contribute their piece to the puzzle. The timing is auspicious – with global events like the 2026 World Cup and upcoming Olympics on the horizon, the demand for next-level fan experiences will only grow. The XR Sports Alliance is positioning the industry to meet that demand in unison, rather than through disjointed efforts. It’s an open invitation to all who believe in the immersive future: come share your insights, test your innovations, and build the future of sports together. After all, bold ideas in isolation can only go so far. United for immersion, the industry can turn XR-powered sports from a futuristic demo into a mass-market reality in record time.
The future of all sports is immersive – and it will take all of us to build it. 7, 17
Footnotes
1, 3, 5, 8 - Accedo, Qualcomm, and HBS Launch XR Sports Alliance to Fast-Track XR Sports Services Commercialization [June 18th, 2024], https://www.accedo.tv/insights-and-news/accedo-qualcomm-and-hbs-launch-xr-sports-alliance-xr-sports-services
2,4,6,7,13,14,15,18 - Deutsche Telekom, XREAL, and E1 Series among first cohort of XR Sports Alliance Members [Jan 6th, 2025], https://www.accedo.tv/insights-and-news/deutsche-telekom-xreal-and-e1-series-among-first-cohort-of-xr-sports-alliance-members
9,10,11 - HBS leads XR Sports Alliance to deliver fan experiences “no longer constrained to the limitations of TV” [July 1, 2024], https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/hbs-leads-xr-sports-alliance-to-deliver-fan-experiences-no-longer-constrained-to-the-limitations-of-tv/
12,16 - Revolutionize Sports Media with Immersive Spatial Experiences | NVIDIA [May 2025], https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/case-studies/skyrim-ai-sports-media-spatial-experiences/
17 - XR Sports Alliance formed - CSI Magazine [June 18th, 2024], https://www.csimagazine.com/csi/xr-sports-alliance.php