MeetKai, a major company dedicated to conversational artificial intelligence (AI), has teamed up with the Charlotte Hornets to launch the latter’s Hornets Virtual Fan Shop.
Named ‘Buzz City’, the experience is a world-first immersive store for the National Basketball Association (NBA), which aims to engage with basketball fans in unprecedented ways.
With the new eCommerce space, sports aficionados can engage with their favourite teams by shopping in the Metaverse to score jerseys, apparel, and souvenirs.
For the virtual shopping experience, MeetKai’s virtual technologies allow users to become 3D avatars to walk around the shop and speak with other fans.
They can also find collectables in numerous parts of the online store, where fans can test products with virtual try-on technologies.
MeetKai is leveraging its AI-backed digital twin technologies to recreate the Charlotte Hornets Fan Shop, originally located at the team’s iconic Spectrum Center. Located in the heart of Charlotte, North Carolina, Spectrum Center attracts millions of people from across the world for sporting events, concerts and conventions.
Celebrating 35 Years of Charlotte Hornets History
Currently, the Charlotte Hornets is celebrating the 35th anniversary of its inaugural season amid its ongoing 2023-2024 campaign.
Along with the commemoration, the Hornets are stepping up their brand awareness campaigns with the new virtual store to sell a host of collectables, including hats, t-shirts, and sportswear.
Ordered items would be posted to shoppers’ homes via Fantatics, the Charlotte Hornets’ eCommerce partner.
James Kaplan, Co-Founder and CEO, MeetKai, said in a statement,
“At MeetKai, we are honored to power the NBA’s first immersive shopping experience, allowing fans to engage with their favorite team and shop for gear in a space designed to make them feel like they’re there in person on game day. We are proud to partner with the Charlotte Hornets to provide their fans with interactive experiences that connect them closer to their team”
Weili Dai, Co-Founder and Executive Chairwoman, MeetKai, added
“I’m thrilled about this partnership as a former basketball player myself, I’ve always been passionate about the power of sports to bring people together and innovate, in this case, into the wonders of AI and everything it has to offer for fans worldwide. The Charlotte Hornets are industry leaders transforming the future of the NBA’s retail experience, so we’re delighted to have the opportunity to work with the team and build their presence virtually”
She added that her enterprise’s disruptive, cutting-edge AI technologies enabled The Charlotte Hornets to “offer fans convenience and immersive shopping” in unprecedented ways.
Doing so allowed MeetKai to expand access to its AI technology products worldwide, she added.
Furthermore, Fred Whitfield, President and Vice Chairman, Hornets Sports & Entertainment, explained further,
“As technology continues to evolve, it’s important that we meet our fans where they are, and this is a great opportunity to enhance that connection. The Hornets Virtual Fan Shop allows fans to enjoy the gameday shopping experience from anywhere, and we’re excited to offer this innovative new opportunity”
Why MeetKai?
For the launch of the new virtual store experience, XR Today had the honour of speaking with the following executives in a recent video interview:
- Seth J Bennett, Chief Marketing Officer, Charlotte Hornets
- James Kaplan, Chief Executive and Co-Founder, MeetKai
- Weili Dai, Executive Chairwoman and Co-Founder, MeetKai
The three leaders spoke about the company’s move to XR in a first-ever global sports experience of its kind.
Additionally, the executives added the interoperable, browser-based experience was crucial to growing the team’s massive global fanbase.
The platform’s optimised, bespoke virtual and hardware technologies allowed the Charlotte Hornets to leverage MeetKai’s spatial eCommerce tools to develop an accessible, scalable use case for the hit NBA team.
The following are excerpts from the full XR Today video set to be posted in the coming days.
MeetKai and the Charlotte Hornets: An Instantaneous Connection
When asked about MeetKai’s virtual store technologies as an end user, Bennet said that people could enjoy the environment “within a matter of seconds.”
He explained further that it did not “take a lot of time” for people to click the link and instantly access the store.
“That drew us in, and we’re certainly going to look at other areas of our arena experience and business to understand how we can leverage this opportunity,” Bennett said.
The executive continued,
“When you think about it, our sport is covered by over 200 countries, in terms of media coverage, and we’re broadcast in dozens of countries around the world. So for Hornet fans that can’t participate and be here, whether it’s on our West Coast in the US or across the pond, they can participate in our experience, in a twin environment […] That’s what really drew us, and I think that’s where we’re going to look for other opportunities”
Bennett concluded that to expand these opportunities, he could not think of a “better, more impactful place to start than in a retail environment,” as many people love to “look at and purchase cool gear.”
Speaking on the upward trend in sports metaverse adoption rates, Bennet told XR Today that “sports teams will continue to look for ways to engage with brands in different ways”
He added, “This is yet another tool and opportunity for that and a unique way to make an additional [way] to stay connected to our brands than prior to this technology.”
An avid basketball fan who had played the sport since she was nine, Weili stated the new metaverse experience could “be inspiring and very exciting” as fans buy their favourite team’s jerseys.
MeetKai and Democratising the Metaverse
When asked by XR Today about how MeetKai’s technologies allowed the Hornets and other clients to reach the largest fan base possible, Kaplan stated that accessing the browser without plugin installs or massive Unity applications allowed fans to “jump right in.”
Kaplan explained how younger audiences engaged based on how they used their phones, namely via Instagram and other social media platforms.
He noted,
“What we really see is the democratisation factor, [where we don’t require] people to have a special device with a special app store. [There] have been attempts in the past to build community, but oftentimes, what happens is they become exclusive for certain reasons. Our goal is to achieve that far-reaching adoption, and we achieved this by building the experience in browser, and by not leveraging pixel streaming, which some groups use, but is difficult to scale from a cost perspective due to pixel streaming-based solutions. You’re looking at cost, every single time a user is there for a specified amount of time.”
MeetKai had to consider how people all over the world could access the platform and have fun. Allowing users to run the experience in the browser, regardless of the device, was the key technology for enabling democratisation, Kaplan concluded.
Additionally, Weili explained that the company’s hardware semiconductor technologies allowed MeetKai to facilitate virtual experiences for “global development, affordability, and scalability.”
She added that, based on the company’s AI-based technologies, MeetKai’s platform could help serve “the global world.”
Weili explained further,
“How do you drive [interactions] in the real world and leverage AI to get so many things done, faster, more affordable, and with energy savings? That’s what we accomplished on the AI software side to drive a global effort, end-to-end.
Despite being a small, private company, Weili explained that MeetKai had a “big mission and vision to lead in these disruptive technologies, both from the hardware and software sides.”
The Sports Metaverse Rises
The Charlotte Hornets-MeetKai collaboration comes as many teams across sports genres build cutting-edge immersive experiences to engage with fans.
As noted by Improbable’s Chief Executive Herman Narula, the sports industry will rise as a “key area” for metaverse technologies.
For example, Apple has inked an official partnership with the NBA to stream content on its upcoming Vision Pro mixed reality (MR) headsets.
Insomnia Labs created one of the most famous use cases after Golden State Warriors legend Stephen Curry scored an earth-shattering 2,974 three-pointers by the end of the 2022 season. The company created phygital items for the star athlete’s Curry Brand of sportswear, complete with nearly 3,000 non-fungible token (NFT) trainers.
Numerous teams have engaged sports fans with creative ventures, including Improbable’s fan-centric experiences with Major League Baseball (MLB).
Other teams like Manchester City have partnered with Web3 platform OKX for NFT and phygital items on the internet. Companies like Verizon have also entered the sports arena by supporting large-scale immersive experiences for teams like the Carolina Panthers in September 2021. Snap and Genius Sports have also joined forces with Verizon to expand augmented reality (AR) campaign adoption for the National Football League (NFL).
Furthermore, the Professional Golfer’s Association (PGA) and TriggerXR have created immersive gaming experiences, allowing children and young adults to learn more about golfing via the latter’s Safari Par-Tee app.
For more information, kindly visit https://meetkai.com/ and https://www.nba.com/hornets/.
