Virtual sports becoming the new normal

Sixteen current NBA stars will be taking their basketball game virtual with an NBA 2K tournament. Tip off is tonight at 7pm ET on TSN4.

The players will participate in a bracket-style tournament ending on April 11th.

The winner of the tournament will receive $100,000 to donate to a charity connected to COVID-19 relief efforts.

The race, which started in 1913, was cancelled for the first time since the First World War.

To make this year’s virtual race happen, Flanders Classics have teamed up with TV broadcaster Sporza and technology firms Bkool and Kiswe to develop a digital platform reserved to pros for the virtual route of the last 32km as well as a live streaming app that will allow fans to follow the race.

In the TV time slots originally dedicated to Indycar, computer-generated images of an iRacing competition have aired, a video-game broadcast that had the look of a virtual presentation but the feel of something much more substantial.

The debut of the series was livestreamed on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch and drew in more than 400,000 viewers. NBC Sports will telecast the virtual event this Saturday.

Now known as eNASCAR, will continue until actual racing resumes.

While eNASCAR may be new to the fans, virtual simulators have been used by almost every major racing team for training since 2008. iRacing turned the concept into an actual competition, allowing drivers to race against each other in such a life-like form right from inside their homes.

The drivers, along with their fans, have been taking it very seriously. So far, the first two broadcasts on Fox Sports brought in a combined total of more than 2 million viewers.

The Yankees’ Double-A affiliate went virtual.

The idea originated after watching other MiLB teams role out their own twitch accounts and play each other in the popular MLB The Show video game, which now has full rosters of minor league players.

The Thunder hosted the first of what could be eight Thursday Night Thunder
broadcasts on the team’s YouTube channel, which feature game play from MLB 20 The Show.