Washington sports king Ted Leonsis talks VR in sports
The sporting world was revolutionized not too long ago with the rise of data in the Moneyball era. Now, a second revolution could be in the not-so-distant future.
Washington Wizards, Capitals and Mystics owner Ted Leonsis praised the emphasis that his teams have placed on advanced statistics and emphasized the growing role of virtual reality for athletic training in a CNBC "Closing Bell" interview Thursday.
"From what I've seen there is nothing that will drive productivity in training in a bigger and better way than VR," he said, adding that the majority of his expenses as an owner were in his players and their development.
"To take young people and give them complex sets of information and role playing and to be able to put them into the game or put them into that situation is going to drive productivity increases in sports."
But adding virtual reality to the tool kit wouldn't make data analytics any less important, according to Leonsis who compared the business to technical trading.
"We have double math Ph.D.s who sometime don't have to watch the game who can tell us exactly what happened just by looking at the data," he said.
More and more teams in professional sports are utilizing both in training and practice. In the National Football League, for example, more and more teams teams, including the Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers and Minnesota Vikings, have already embraced the technology.
The competitive edge could provide the little boost his teams are missing down the stretch, with the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League and the Washington Wizards of the National Basketball Association both being bumped from the playoffs in their most recent seasons.