Weavr First Prototype
The Weavr Consortium, comprised of six UK companies spanning esports, education and entertainment and supported by UK Research and Innovation, recently revealed their powerful technology’s potential to excite and engage fans.
The Weavr consortium have publicly demonstrated their first working prototype mobile app. Weavr’s high-fidelity predictive data analytics gives esports fans accurate forecasts in real time, unique insights into player performance and integrates into the live viewing experience. Just eight months on from founding in January 2019, the consortium have built a highly functional prototype of the first third-party analytics and viewing platform for esports that they were able to test with the 27,000 fans at ESL One Birmingham. Fans were blown away. Weavr is a technology platform that uses live and historic data to create meaningful and personalised mixed-reality experiences for esports and sports fans, powers the creation of data-driven content, and opens up commercial opportunities for brands and teams. It lets fans move between physical and virtual viewing, see the stories they want and be immersed like never before. |
James Dean , ESL UK CEO & Weavr CEO, said: “We’re so pleased with the fans’ reactions to Weavr so early in development. We set out to revolutionise the sport and esports viewing experience and we’re well on the way to that. We’re looking forward to working with everyone – fans, players, publishers and more – to keep the momentum up and keep changing viewing for the better”. The consortium set out the next stages of development for Weavr, with new products and functionality slated to be ready to thrill fans by ESL One Hamburg at the end of October 2019. Nigel Adams, Minister for Sport, Media and the Creative Industries, said: “Weavr were awarded £4 million through the Audience of the Future Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to help it create a new platform to transform the way fans remotely engage with live sports, so it is exciting to see its first working prototype launch. I’ve no doubt creative companies such as Weavr will, with its innovative product having far-reaching commercial value for the UK, be at the heart of the nation’s economy for many years to come.” Andrew Chitty, from UK Research & Innovation and the Challenge Director for Audience of the Future, said: “The UK is home to some of the world’s leading digital and creative talent and new immersive technologies are fundamentally changing the way that creative companies can interact with their audiences. Esports is leading the way in creating new and richer audience experiences with significant commercial potential. It’s that combination of creativity and economic growth that is central to the Industrial Strategy and the Creative Industries Sector Deal.” The team behind Weavr believe that despite rapidly advancing technology and performance data being more readily available than ever before, sports viewing had barely moved in decades. They have assembled a team of the best in the business in data, esports and production and decided to fix it, starting with esports. |
About Audience of the Future
Audience of the Future is a £33m investment of public funding to grow the UK’s leading position in immersive experience production. It’s part of UK Government’s £4.2bn Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and delivered by UK Research & Innovation.
£4m of the £33m fund was awarded to Weavr, a consortium made up of ESL, University of York, Focal Point VR, dock10, REWIND and Cybula to demonstrate audience demand for a mixed reality esports viewing experience with personalised data across AR studio, second screen and VR apps.