![]() ![]() While early versions of virtual fans were little more than set dressing, the virtual fan experience has evolved into a suite of services and products that includes thousands of concurrent livestreams, tiered seating, complex LED and graphical layouts, tiered moderation and most importantly, low-latency video feeds for fans to truly react in real time. ![]() The virtual fan experience concept has grown rapidly over the past year in both prevalence and sophistication. As with traditional live events, virtual audience members were able to cheer on and engage with their favorite entertainers as their on-air participation was filmed live throughout the broadcast. The infrastructure created a larger-than-life virtual audience mosaic consisting of 1,000 live fans, each streaming into the broadcast from their own home, transcending time zones and geographical boundaries throughout the world in real time. The WWE’s world-class solution was conceived through large-scale installation of the most sophisticated high-resolution LED screens, populated edge to edge with WWE fans. ![]() Tasked with designing a robust, large-scale virtual fan experience, producers at The Famous Group called on their long-time technical partners at Quince Imaging and renowned cloud infrastructure experts, Frozen Mountain, to develop a premium, custom solution for WWE, scalable enough to be deployed in professional sporting arenas worldwide. WWE’s bold choice to fill the arena with 1000 virtual fans remains one of the largest and most successful use cases to date. (WWE), were among the first to rise to the challenge and tackle this solution head-on with their debut of the revolutionary ThunderDome virtual fan experience which premiered during Friday Night SmackDown at the Amway Center on August 21, 2020. ![]() The industry veterans at World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. Finally, through a series of trial and error, the single standout solution that has revived live events, and proven more effective and authentic than any other – the “ virtual fan experience” – was born. Producers quickly exhausted early audience simulation efforts with minimal success, including reduced-capacity ticketing, piping virtual crowd noise into venues, cardboard “spectator” cutouts to fill vacant seats, and inserting fans into venues digitally via augmented reality. As public safety regulations tightened in the midst of the pandemic, venues began experimenting with a wide range of solutions to overcome the unprecedented obstacles they faced. Event producers were especially challenged with finding a new medium to connect with and engage target audiences. As the coronavirus pandemic and a host of government-regulated safety mandates swept the nation in 2020, event planners, venue professionals and broadcasters were forced to redefine best practices for hosting live events while ensuring the safety and wellbeing of talent and audiences in large gathering spaces. ![]()
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