A company with a product that uses virtual reality to teach people to hit baseballs is taking swings with Major League Baseball games on television.
WIN Reality, which just raised $45 million, plans to spend about $1 million this season on television commercials during ball games on TBS, ESPN, Fox and Fox Sports 1 and some regional sports networks. It is also putting signage up in Major League Ballparks starting in St. Louis and Colorado.
Commercials starring retired Major League pitcher CC Sabathia, a Cy Young award winner, and his son Carsten, a top hitting project expected to play for Georgia Tech, show off the device, with the elder Sabathia acting relieved that WIN Reality wasn’t around when he was a player.
Users of WIN Reality wear an Oculus Quest virtual-reality headset to see a pitcher on the mound in a ballpark and put a device around the barrel of the bat they’re swinging to see whether they’d hit the ball and if they connected, how far it would go. The device can be dialed up so that the hitter faces big-league stuff.
A professional version of WIN Reality is already being used by 22 Major League teams and more than 100 colleges, company president Brenden Windle told Broadcasting+Cable. The company introduced its product for players 18 and under in October 2020.
Windle stresses that WIN Reality is not some sort of video game. “It’s a baseball training product,” he said.
WIN Reality decided it was time to turn to TV to reach consumers after Meta’s marketing blitz late last year for its VR headsets created a tailwind for VR applications.
“We have this unique dynamic where we have parents who buy the product for their kids. So we are marketing to both. We want kids to be excited about it, but we also want parents to understand the value and see what this could do for their kids,” Windle said.
“We thought that baseball games, and baseball-oriented television, like SportsCenter and MLB Network, were a great place to potentially reach both parents and their kids,” he said. “We wanted to meet our customers where they are. The customers and the end-user happen to be different people. We want to reach them both with a message that will resonate with both.”
As a new, small advertiser, it took some effort to get air time in sports, the hottest segment of the TV market. But once the networks saw the product, it was just a matter of price, Windle said. And while there may be ways to reach a more targeted audience, WIN Reality opted for the broader reach of network TV with a more efficient cost per thousand viewers.
Now that student athletes are able to cash in on their names, images and likenesses under NCAA rule, WIN Reality thought Carsten Sabathia would make a good spokesperson for its product.
When his whole family came to a commercial shoot, CC Sabathia became part of the campaign, reinforcing the company’s approach of marketing to both young players and their parents.
In some of the spots CC uses the device while his son looks on.
“Retired MLB Pitcher CC Sabathia is old school His son Carsten is new school. Carsten uses WIN Realty for his hitter training, a state of the art tool that utilizes VR to improve timing, pitch recognition and confidence. A new school approach to more hits. Hitters love it, Pitchers however…” one spot says. “Man, I'm glad I’m retired,” CC Sabathia says, removing the goggles.
In another spot, present day CC Sabathia takes virtual swings against CC Sabathia in his prime. ‘Man I’m good,” Sabathia said as he hits one out of the park. “Both of me.” Carsten jokingly asks how many Major League home runs his dad had. “More than you,” replied CC, who had three dingers over his 19 year career.
“That family is just rich with storylines that we want to lean into,” said John Trahar, creative and strategy lead at Greatest Common Factory, that ad agency that created the campaign. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they want to work with jus. They’re just great to work with as well.”
He added that the first time they met CC Sabathia, he was watching Carsten use the VR device. "That line about ‘I’m glad I’m retired’ was sincere. It came out when I asked him about the product. That came from reality.” ■
