New Cosm LED-Driven Shared Reality Venues Put Sports Fans In Primo Virtual Seats At Live Games
August 22, 2024 by Dave Haynes
Immersive is one of the more abused and misapplied pro AV terms out there, but a fast-growing entertainment company in LA is opening up what it calls shared reality venues that look very much like they genuinely immerse customers in viewing experiences – whether that’s live sports or custom-shot and edited films.
The first location of Cosm just opened last month in LA, and I have been seeing posts on Linkedin that show UK footy fans watching Premier League matches on a curved screen that seemingly puts them in pretty good field-level, supporters section seats at the game … though it’s morning and they’re in Inglewood, CA.
The first Cosm is in the Hollywood Park area of LA, close to the NFL-centric SoFi Stadium and the Intuit Dome, the just-opened, tech-filled new home of the NBA’s LA Clippers. Cosm has numerous components within its venue, but the centerpiece is a 12K curved LED display that is reminiscent of the inside theater of Sphere in Las Vegas. It has an 87-foot-diameter wraparound LED display, while the Sphere is 366 feet. But the viewing impact appears to be very similar, because a smaller scale venue allows seating closer to the screen, and the viewing material.
Where Sphere is focused mostly on big ticket live music experiences, tapping into the deeper, discretionary incomes of Baby Boomers with acts like U2, The Greatful Dead and The Eagles, COSM is more about live simulcasts of big sports events and, when those aren’t on, rebroadcasts of theatrical productions and purpose-designed immersive cinema.
Getting to, let’s say, a Manchester City-Real Madrid Men’s Champion’s League game in England or Spain would cost a pile of money for airfare and lodgings, and maybe involve crappy nosebleed tickets that nonetheless cost hundreds of dollars. Virtual seats would likely cost less than a $100 at Cosm. For example, the venue is marketing premium viewing of big US Open quarter final tennis matches for $61.
The company’s roots go back to the 1940s, owning a company in the business of designing and delivering planetariums – also domed, multimedia experiences, albeit using projection. It has raised more than $250 million to drive its growth and two more locations are in the pipeline – a Dallas location (Grandscape) due to open later this month and a new one announced last week, to be built in Atlanta’s Centennial Yards.
“Cosm was created to redefine the way the world experiences content, and over the past few years we have been building the foundation of the business and growing the team necessary to achieve that vision,” says Jeb Terry, President and CEO of Cosm. “We’ve been establishing a robust portfolio of content partnerships with the NBA, UFC, ESPN, NBC Sports, Turner Sports, FOX Sports, Cirque du Soleil, content studios, artists, creators, and more. We’ve aligned with the real estate community, with three premium locations in North America and a fast-growing waitlist of developers interested in bringing Cosm to their cities.
“We’ve opened our first venue in Los Angeles to an overwhelmingly positive response from the local community and fans experiencing Shared Reality for the first time. Now, as Cosm continues to push boundaries, we are bringing on new financial partners, all of whom carry the strategic weight to match their investing acumen, providing invaluable insights and growth capital that will help us achieve our biggest vision and aggressively scale the business.”
Cosm, the PR continues, was founded in 2020 with the acquisition of Evans Sutherland, one of the most innovative technology companies in the history of modern computer graphics, along with its subsidiary Spitz, Inc., and the subsequent follow-on acquisitions of LiveLikeVR (now Cosm Immersive) and C360.
Today, the company draws on its collective 75-year experience in technological innovation to usher in the next generation of entertainment through Shared Reality – a category-defining experience that seamlessly bridges the virtual and physical worlds by merging state-of-the-art visuals with the energy and excitement of the crowd and elevated food and beverage service. At Cosm, fans feel like they are sitting courtside, inside the octagon, standing on the sidelines, or cheering from the front row at the most sought-after events from around the globe.
Cosm is based in LA, with satellite offices in Dallas, Salt Lake City, Chadds Ford, PA, Pittsburgh, New York, and Gurugram, India.
Hard to discern from the PR and website what’s being used for the tech here. The software driving the shows is in-house: CX Display, powered by CX Engine, is the world’s first and only Software Defined Display. It brings content to life by wrapping guests in an immersive LED dome with best-in-class resolution, brightness, contrast, and lifespan.
The website suggests the LED canvas is custom-manufactured, as opposed to supplied by a third-party manufacturer state-side or in Asia. The CTO said this spring in a chat with Bob Raikes and the 8K Association that: We design the individual LED modules to match both the minimum viewing distance of the space and the resolution requirements of the display. In many cases, 8K is only the starting point for our LED dome displays, which is a direct result of Cosm’s long history in constructing and powering immersive dome theatres in planetariums and theme parks around the world. Our strong expertise in suspending disbelief through powering experience paired with our category-defining end-to-end immersive technology solution has created a closed loop where our immersive software and hardware work in tandem to deliver unapparelled and seamless image quality across the entire display, no matter the geometry. With industry-leading image processing capabilities, our immersive software suite, CX Engine, optimizes each individual pixel on the display, completely blending away the seams between modules so it feels as if the entire display surface disappears, and you’re transported inside the content being displayed.
I am through LA for two-three days this fall. This just went on my gotta-see list.
Amazing. This opens plenty of opportunities for leagues, tournaments, and clubs as it increases their audience, which is hard to do if you only think about physical space.