Twitter has finally jumped on the 360-degree video bandwagon, thanks to a new partnership with the NBA and Samsung.
The deal will see the official NBA Twitter account tweet out links to exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from the NBA Finals shot using the Samsung Gear 360 camera.
The clips officially kick off today in conjunction with the Cleveland Cavaliers game against the Golden State Warriors. The 360-degree videos will consist of behind-the-scenes clips of pregame warm-ups, player entrances, captain meetings, and postgame footage from the floor, reports Adweek.
The only caveat for Twitter is that the videos won’t play inside timelines, and are instead being hosted on an external website. Several pregame videos have already been tweeted by the NBA account, including players such as Stephen Curry arriving for the game. When watching the videos, you can click and drag the camera to view 360-degrees of action.
@StephenCurry30 arrives for Game 1 of the #NBAFinals. #Gear360 presented by @SamsungMobileUS https://t.co/kwxerqlAdV
— NBA (@NBA) June 3, 2016
The partnership sees Twitter play catch-up with social media rival Facebook, which has already hosted native VR videos on its platform, including a recent clip shot in New York’s Grand Central Station.
Live sporting events, however, tend to be Twitter’s arena, mainly due to its live tweeting experience. For evidence of the platform’s dominance over sports fans, one need not look further than the frenzy that was witnessed on Twitter during the Golden State Warriors’ contests over the Memorial Day weekend. Games 6 and 7 of the Conference Finals attracted a combined 3.61 million tweets sent from 1.21 million unique Twitter accounts.
Additionally, Twitter has already bet big on live-streaming sports with its historic NFL partnership that will see it broadcast 10 Thursday Night Football games. If its latest stab at 360-degree videos turns out to be a success, you can be sure that a lot more of the clips will make it on to Twitter in the near future.
