Sprouting XR: XRSA immerses itself to transform XR sports into a scalable reality in 2026

By Shaun Lim

Launched in 2024, the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA) was founded to accelerate the development and commercialisation of immersive sports experiences. Last year, APB+ spoke with the founders of XRSA – Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, and HBS – to find out how extended reality (XR) technologies could transform sports broadcasting by offering fans interactive, personalised, and fully immersive experiences.

A year on, XRSA continues to expand its membership, bringing together technology and sports leaders to realise the full potential of XR in live sports. APB+ recently caught up with Lucy Trang Nguyen, Director of Strategic Alliances & Business Development for Emerging Technologies, Accedo, to explore the alliance’s progress and next steps.

What pilot learnings or livestream experiments have emerged so far for XRSA, and how are they shaping the alliance’s next steps in XR sports broadcasting?

Lucy Trang Nguyen: The first deployment took place in the summer this year, with a very exciting project around the E1 Series, the world’s first all-electric race boat Championship, featuring teams owned by some of the biggest sport and entertainment stars. It is highly competitive, featuring cutting-edge technology and top-tier pilots, making each race a thrilling and unpredictable experience.  

The XRSA carried out an XR deployment for a race in the E1 Series, a first-of-its-kind for this type of experience for both racing sports and water sports. During the race that took place in June in Lago Maggiore, HBS worked alongside the E1 Series production team at Aurora Media to create content specifically for immersive experiences in both 180° and 360° formats. By creating several different camera feeds, the team produced truly immersive video streams and helped the XRSA to experiment and understand which of these work best in XR devices.

The deployment served as a testbed to explore how immersive XR content can enhance fan engagement and create new monetisation opportunities across live sports — testing over 20 different immersive camera angles to capture the action in entirely new ways.

Key learnings from this collaboration include insights on production workflows, cross-partner collaboration, and how to scale XR sports experiences from pilot to large-scale service.

This first XRSA deployment gave us valuable insights that are now shaping our next phase of experiments. Beyond validating the technical workflows such as testing camera operations, optimal positioning, and height to achieve the most compelling immersive views, we learned that the true value of immersion lies not in 180° versus 360°, but in camera placement and contextual storytelling.

What matters most is how emotion, proximity, and narrative come together to make fans feel present.

Our next steps will focus on creating editorial value for fans, producing and testing end-to-end storytelling pieces that can be either guided or interactive. This means experimenting with formats where users are placed inside 180°/360° scenes, with the freedom to click on points of interest, switch camera angles, or explore 3D elements; essentially, attending the event virtually and deciding how to experience it themselves.

We are also deepening our focus on supporting elements that enhance presence, particularly spatial audio. We are testing how to capture and balance different audio layers to create realistic immersion, combining background ambience with foreground sounds such as commentary, team radio, or interview dialogue. In parallel, we are refining non-intrusive data overlays that add context without distraction.

Together, these layers of sound, context, and emotion define the feeling of true immersion.

The membership of the XRSA continues to grow with major players like Google and Lenovo, as well as sports brands such as Red Bull, French Soccer League (LFP), and Premier Lacrosse League. How has this expanded membership of diverse partners influenced your priorities or roadmap?

Nguyen: It was important from the start to ensure that we have representation from across the entire ecosystem. This is vital because it means we can experiment with end-to-end workflows and gather input and insights from each stage of the immersive workflow. We have had a great deal of engagement from across the membership and enthusiasm that is helping further drive that roadmap with several exciting deployments in the works.

Our latest cohort brings the total membership to 22 companies and further expands our range of sports covered within the alliance. Having a diverse group of sports IP owners within the XR Sports Alliance including the Vegas Golden Knights (ice hockey), MLSE (multi-sport), Red Bull (extreme and action sports), the French Football League (LFP), Premier Lacrosse League, FISE (urban sports), E1 Series (powerboat racing), and the Pro Climbing League, allows us to test a wide range of immersive production and editorial techniques.

From team-based and individual to fast-paced physical, racket, motorsport, and extreme or urban sports, each could potentially serve as a unique test bed to experiment with different storytelling and live-content approaches that can later be applied across the respective sport types.

What commercial models are the XRSA testing and what high-impact cases are deemed most promising?

Nguyen: Commercial models were not part of the initial testing scope, but they are a core area of focus for future experimentation within the XRSA.

Speaking with APB+ last year, you highlighted infrastructure and bandwidth as key hurdles for XR sports. How has 5G and related technologies changed the landscape for delivering live immersive streaming experiences?

Nguyen: As 5G adoption continues, it is making immersive video experiences more affordable, scalable, and accessible. Immersive video production demands high-quality video capture and multiple simultaneous camera angles, which place heavy requirements on bandwidth and low latency. 5G networks, with their high throughput and ultra-low latency, enable the real-time transmission of high-definition and XR video that previously required far more costly connectivity such as dedicated fibre or satellite links.  

Looking ahead, as 5G evolves toward 5G-Advanced and 6G, it will unlock even more advanced XR applications powered by AI both within the network and at the experience layer. On the network side, AI will help optimise traffic flows, latency, and resource management to ensure smoother, higher-quality streaming. On the user side, it will enable more intelligent and personalised fan experiences from real-time AI agents that let viewers ask questions or access live stats and replays, to automated highlights, contextual insights, and adaptive camera perspectives that react to the fan’s interests in real time. 

From early trials, what measurable fan feedback or engagement metrics have emerged that indicate which immersive features resonate most with viewers and what they prefer in XR sports experiences?

Nguyen: In our first deployment, we conducted user testing across three groups: under-30 XR and sports enthusiasts, sports TV producers, and XR industry experts, to understand how different audiences experience immersive sports. We tested 20 camera positions across both 180° and 360° formats, and one clear insight emerged: immersion is not about 180° or 360° it’s about camera placement and contextual storytelling.

“Immersion is not defined by field of view, but by the emotional and contextual presence it creates, transforming XR sports from a novelty into a scalable and meaningful fan experience.” – Lucy Trang Nguyen, Director of Strategic Alliances & Business Development for Emerging Technologies, Accedo

Across all groups, the shots that placed fans closest to the action, such as the cockpit or front-of-boat views in the E1 Series, and close-up podium moments, were consistently the most engaging. Participants agreed that 180° video offered better orientation and felt more natural, while 360° delivered more excitement and emotion but required additional context and guidance.

From these findings, it became clear that the perceived value of immersion is defined by the combination of emotion, proximity, and context. Delivering truly engaging experiences requires aligning narrative and camera positioning with key supporting elements that enhance presence and understanding.

This includes the use of spatial audio blending ambient sounds such as water, crowds, engines, and voices with commentary or team radio to create a sense of realism and non-intrusive data overlays, including name tags, mini-maps, and lap positions, to provide context without distraction.

Ultimately, immersion is not defined by field of view, but by the emotional and contextual presence it creates, transforming XR sports from a novelty into a scalable and meaningful fan experience. These insights will guide the next phase of XRSA experimentation in 2026.