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 Canadian company World Audio Visual Entertainment Systems (WAVES) is on a mission to reinvent what being at a live event can mean for spectators. S&T's Mark Jeffers spoke to Alain Charette, vice president of corporate development at the company, about its innovative interactive viewing system, Kangaroo.TV.
Kangaroo.TV - named because its users wear the wireless device in a pouch around their necks - is an interactive viewing system that enables spectators at a sporting event to see and hear what they want, when they want it, on a four inch LCD TFT transflective colour screen. The kit receives scrambled, realtime multiple video and audio channel broadcasts and is optimised to handle four video and 64 audio streams at any one time, allowing fans to literally hop from feed to feed and take control of their event experience.
So, why did WAVES think launching such a device would be smart? "People think that if spectators are sitting at an event then they will see and understand everything that's going on," explains Charette. "But that's clearly not the case. In the past, fans would have to head home and watch the television highlights to see what they had missed. Now they don't have to."
According to Charette, it isn't just the fans that can benefit from Kangaroo.TV. "The device also offers a tremendous opportunity for rights holders such as advertisers and promoters and it is essentially a smartcard," he says. "Sponsorship and branding opportunities exist that bring added value to any type of sporting event and that can bring in new revenue streams."
Looking ahead to such new income streams, Kangaroo.TV will be certain to capitalise on the growth in fantasy and trivia gaming in North America. "Unfortunately the technology is limited at the moment in being able to provide this, but in a year or two from now, gaming will definitely be part of the device that is used in the stadium," says Charette, "making Kangaroo.TV truly interactive." Driving onwards and upwards So far, Kangaroo.TV has been used successfully in Champ Car racing, the open wheel series in the US, for two years. And this season, NASCAR Digital Entertainment has been trialling the application in a deal covering seven Craftsman Truck Series tracks.
As well as carrying SPEED Channel's live television coverage of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, the Kangaroo.TV device offers live in-truck video feeds, live team audio communications, an electronic version of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series media guide, and live timing and scoring data. Fans may also activate a 'favorite driver' function that coordinates live timing and scoring data and in-car communication for a specific team.
At the time of speaking to Charette, three NASCAR races had utilised Kangaroo.TV successfully. "We've had great feedback from both NASCAR fans and NASCAR itself," says Charette. Jeffrey Pollack, managing director of broadcasting and new media at NASCAR Digital Entertainment is similarly bullish: "We are working hard to stay ahead of the new media curve, and our test with Kangaroo is part of that effort. The concept behind this device is a good one and we think it has great potential for our sport. We are all about access for our fans, and a video-based at-track device could be another way for us to invite them deeper inside NASCAR," he told S&T. (Also see this month's Infostrada Sports' Databox for some NASCAR statistics).
Whilst WAVES' ambitions are to ultimately roll out Kangaroo.TV globally and across as many sports as possible, "we are focusing on North America first," explains Charette, "and once that is all in place then we will look further afield." With IMG's digital arm TWI Interactive on board to help exploit and market the technology in a three-year deal, sports such as golf and tennis are on the wish-list of the Montreal-based company. Pricing pointsPricing of Kangaroo.TV will change depending on the sport and deals in place with commercial partners, the latter of which may decide to absorb the cost of the device in their sponsorship deals for example, in exchange for branding.
At Champ Car and NASCAR events, Kangaroo.TV costs around $35 a day or $70 for the week, and devices are hired using a credit card, meaning fans are trackable and therefore less likely to take their Kangaroo.TVs home as a memento. Where fans have accidentally taken them home, there has been a high level of returns, according to WAVES. "We have deliberately made Kangaroo.TV affordable," says Charette, "and our business model will move to a mixture of retail as well as rental." Rights issues In terms of recycling the broadcaster's feeds for use on Kangaroo.TV, does WAVES have to negotiate any rights deals itself? "Generally our strategy would be to negotiate rights with the sanctioning body of a sport," says Charette. "However, the sanctioning body might need permission from its broadcast partners. This category is really a new type of media and has not been sold before, meaning the whole area is a bit of a grey one. So far however, utilising the broadcast feeds has not been an issue for us and we have licensing agreements in place."
Generally, Charette believes that Kangaroo.TV is complimentary to broadcasters and therefore is not infringing their rights. "On the whole, broadcasters have been very positive about the device," he adds. "Really, what we are doing is putting television from home and the giant LED screens at events into the hands of the fans. We are offering them the next generation of viewing experience."
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