Major League Baseball has announced that its virtual ballpark initiative will host an interactive watch party for a select regular-season game each Wednesday during the month of September.
The initiative launched yesterday as the Minnesota Twins faced off against the Tampa Bay Rays. Fans from around the world were able to access the virtual ballpark for free by logging in with their MLB account on the league’s website.
The virtual ballpark technology was developed last year in partnership with Improbable, a London-based technology firm that specialises in creating and managing virtual spaces. Each interactive watch party features a 3D representation of the game, powered by MLB’s Gameday 3D product and synced with the live game broadcast.
New for this season, fans can chat directly with friends using a party system and earn points to use at the virtual shop for special digital jerseys. Other games to feature this month will include Cincinnati Reds vs St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants vs Baltimore Orioles, and Tampa Bay Rays vs Detroit Tigers.
Elsewhere in MLB, the New York Yankees have partnered with Vapur to enhance the team’s sustainability efforts at Yankee Stadium.
Over the past two months, 23 bottle-refilling stations have been fitted across all levels of the stadium, with 21 more scheduled to be installed during the upcoming offseason. Vapur ‘anti-bottles’, which stand when full and fold when empty, will also be sold with Yankees branding in team stores at the stadium.
A new video scoreboard has been fitted at Malaga’s Palacio de Deportes José María Martín Carpena, which will host the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup Finals later this year.
The new system has a total surface area of 165 square metres and has been facilitated by the Malaga City Council. The installation cost €590,000 (£497,000/$655,000).
In July, it was announced that the BJK Cup Finals would move from Seville to Malaga, which was already scheduled to host the finale of the Davis Cup. The two events will now run alongside each other in November at the 11,300-capacity venue.
The Pittsburgh Steelers NFL team has added an ‘Acrisure Stadium’ mode to its mobile app to allow for easy access to maps of the venue, parking information, mobile ticketing and more.
The Steelers have also fitted new ChargeFuze Stations throughout Acrisure Stadium to allow fans to charge their mobile devices.
