Arsenal’s New AR Experience Gets Players Checking Their Fans’ Skills
Published: July 23, 2019
Premier League football club Arsenal launched their new Adidas home kit on July 1, 2019. Their flagship shop - The Armoury - re-opened its door after a huge rebranding with an Augmented Reality-powered skills area, where fans can have their skills rated by Mesut Özil, Ainsley Maitland-Niles or Alex Iwobi.
For this unique encounter creative agency 442 Design partnered up with UK AR company INDE, which is no stranger to creating unique fan experiences, having already deployed installations for Adidas Tango League and NFL events.
Hosts invite fans to the cage, and hand over an iPad that can choose a member of the first team for the experience. The host then directs the fan to a marked spot on the floor. After that the Arsenal player then “walks” on screen and encourages the user to show their ball skills. Once the tricks were complete Arsenal player responds with his signature reaction, then gets set for a unique photo opportunity with the fan. The picture - and the entire performance - is automatically captured by the AR system, and can be shared instantly.
Özil, Maitland-Niles, and Iwobi were captured in a special environment in order to have a realistic encounter with them. “One of the characteristics of INDE’s approach to AR content production is to bring together techniques that simplify the process. Since the past year, our BroadcastAR interactive product allows us to mix green screen capture techniques with a videogame approach to link behaviours into our characters, in this specific project some of the Arsenal’s best players to offer a memorable interactive experience to their fans” explained Xava Fragoso, INDE’s CDO.
“It's clear that we’re able - through our proprietary technology, content and systems - to offer authentic, high quality and scalable AR experiences. These give fans the ability to interact with their heroes in a way that would otherwise be virtually impossible to deliver. This delivers true fan engagement, which is a key objective of any sponsor (and team)” suggested Alex Alanson, INDE’s COO.