BearingPoint, who are the official innovation partner of Leinster Rugby, today hosted a media event showcasing the capabilities of metaverse technology for the Leinster Rugby sporting community. Taking place in their Dublin headquarters, along with other virtual attendees joining from Leinster Rugby Club facilities in UCD, London and Paris, the event was an early demonstration of BearingPoint’s VR and innovation capabilities. The metaverse, for those who still aren’t fully aware, is a digital environment where you can work, collaborate and meet friends, and Leinster Rugby is looking to lead the way for the future of sport in this new digital world, like some other global brands are already doing.
For the event, all attendees donned Meta Quest 2 headsets and entered a virtual recreation of the BearingPoint offices in Paris and finished with a pitchside experience and presentation in a full scale virtually-built Aviva Stadium developed by the BearingPoint team using Unreal Engine. Whilst, intitally, there were some teething problems with people joining the experience, it all worked well and it was interesting to see what the team had achieved with a very impressive recreation of the Aviva stadium, from a technical and graphical standpoint alone.
With experiences like this, BearingPoint is planning to play a central role in leveraging its VR expertise to enable Leinster Rugby to further engage its fans through immersive experiences and to explore the wider commercial possibilities and potential this technology has in the sporting world.
Speaking at the launch, Gillian O’Sullivan, Country Leader for BearingPoint Ireland said: “Today we unveiled our plans to lead Leinster Rugby into the metaverse. It is a very exciting day for us as their innovation partner and we are committed to leading them on this journey. The power of virtual reality is enormous, and we wanted to show how this technology can expand businesses and experiences. What better way to do it than by bringing Leinster Rugby into the metaverse.
BearingPoint’s vision and commitment for Leinster Rugby were set out by their immersive experience expert, Eric Chevallet at the event. Speaking at the launch, Eric Chevallet, Head of Immersive Labs at BearingPoint said, “At BearingPoint, we are an innovative company that is ahead of the curve with regard to metaverse technology and more broadly with virtual reality technology. The potential for businesses in the metaverse is endless, and we are delighted to be working with Ireland’s leading sports franchise making this first move today.”
Kevin Quinn, Head of Commercial and Marketing at Leinster Rugby who attended the event said, “At Leinster Rugby, we’re always striving to improve, to nurture and drive the pursuit of excellence in everything we do both on and off the pitch. This exciting initiative is a significant and strategic business and brand building opportunity for us at Leinster Rugby.”
He added: “By entering the metaverse with BearingPoint’s support, we are broadening our horizons to identify new digital commercial opportunities and working to develop immersive rugby experiences that provide our community with new ways to experience rugby, follow their teams and interact with our brand.”
“We have a passionate, engaged and growing supporter base and we’re excited to work with our innovation partner, BearingPoint, to explore new ways to improve how we communicate and engage with them.”
As we know, interest in the metaverse has grown exponentially in the past year or so which is causing businesses to rethink and change how they can engage more effectively with users online but there are still a number of barriers to entry. It will be interesting to see how things develop once more powerful headsets become available and brands start to imagine even more immersive ways to engage with customers around the world.
