Social VR sports viewing startup livelike has announced a Series B investment of $9.6 million.

Livelike is building a social sports viewing platform for VR and AR devices. The company’s product focuses on connecting remote users into ‘virtual suite’ where they can watch a live sports game projected outside the window (as if watching it from a stadium skybox), along with virtual screens showing stats, different angles, replays, and more. The company hopes to create a “new, interactive, communal way of watching live sports”

I was impressed when I got a chance to see an early version of their tech back in 2015. The company went on to raise a $5 million Series A round in 2016, and this week announced a $9.6 million Series B investment, bringing in investors Greycroft Partners and Lepe Partners, among others.

“LiveLike will utilize its new investment to expands its partnerships, and further build out its product and platform to make it even simpler and frictionless for users,” the company explained in its investment announcement. “This will include creating increased cross-platform compatibility, an evolved user interface to make content discovery even more intuitive, and new in-product experiences—such as fantasy sports integrations—designed to spark additional social interactions. Moreover, it will look to build new compelling advertising opportunities that enable marketers to connect with sports fans in groundbreaking ways.”

Image courtesy livelike

Livelike is developing its offering as a white label platform, allowing various sports and event producers to link their broadcasts into the virtual suite, and provide unique branding to fit the broadcaster, sport, and teams on the field. The company says that both FOX Sports and the French Tennis Federation are among the companies they’ve worked with thus far, and have created VR experiences using their tech for Super Bowl LI, UEFA Champions League Final, NCAA Basketball Big East Tournament, and the French Open.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • johngrimoldy

    Wow. I realize it will be next to impossible to put viewers on the field with 6 DOF. This is darned close to being a killer-app for sports fans, particularly if it allows for collaborative viewing like Big Screen.

    • Becca

      RE: 6DOF I think you’re right, certainly not in real time. There are some players (like Intel) working on large scale volumetric capture, but the volume of data captured would be difficult to transmit to the end user for casual viewing.

  • Eddie Barsh

    Wow this is going to be amazing !

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  • Keith.

    This looks awesome. Sure hope “creating increased cross-platform compatibility” includes PSVR. I’d love having this.