Yahoo Sports AM: Is Cosm the future of watching sports?

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🚨 Headlines

🏀 Flagg injures ankle: Duke lost Cooper Flagg to an ankle injury during their win over Georgia Tech. Fortunately for the Blue Devils, X-rays were negative, but the presumptive No. 1 pick is unlikely to play the rest of the ACC tournament. "It's not worth it," said head coach Jon Scheyer.

🎾 Keys can't lose: Madison Keys dominated Belinda Bencic at Indian Wells for her 16th straight win, the second-longest streak this century by any woman over 30 (Serena Williams). Next up: a semifinal meeting with No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, whom she beat in the Australian Open final.

🏀 Curry hits No. 4,000: Stephen Curry reached another milestone in the Warriors' blowout win over the Kings, becoming the first player to make 4,000 career three-pointers. In fact, only one other player has hit even 3,000 threes (James Harden, 3,127).

🏀 Automatic bid: Stephen F. Austin secured their spot in the women's NCAA tournament with a victory in Thursday's lone conference title game (Southland).

👟 Grand Slam Track: The 96 competitors for April's inaugural Grand Slam Track event in Jamaica include Paris 2024 gold medalists Gabby Thomas, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Quincy Hall and Cole Hocker.

🍿 Cosm explained: A new way to watch sports

There's nothing quite like attending a sporting event in person, but watching on TV does often provide a better view. What if you could combine the best of both worlds? That's the promise of Cosm, an immersive entertainment company that hopes to bring "Shared Reality" to the masses.

The company: Cosm was founded in 2020 and built through the acquisition of Evans & Sutherland, one of the world's biggest planetarium companies, and LiveLike VR, which delivers immersive experiences to fans. In 2024, the company opened two venues in Los Angeles and Dallas and instantly went viral (watch this video and you'll see why).

The best way to describe Cosm? A smaller version of the Vegas Sphere — coming soon to a city near you. Atlanta and Detroit locations have already been announced, and the company raised $250 million last July (at a $1 billion valuation) with the goal of going global. "I fully expect to be overseas in the next 2-3 years," says President and CEO Jeb Terry, a former NFL player.

"The planetarium was the first immersive venue ever created, in our opinion. It takes you to space. So we were able to leverage a lot of that backbone and say, 'Let's take you to the sidelines. Let's take you courtside.'"

"We will never replace the in-stadium experience. There's nothing like it. But how do we deliver something close to that and give fans another option when their teams are on the road, or when they're in L.A. and they want the experience of watching Liverpool at Anfield? That's the opportunity, and that's what we push to deliver."

— Jeb Terry, Cosm President and CEO

What's inside: Cosm's main attraction is "The Dome," an 87-foot, 12K resolution dome display with three levels of seating. The Cosm-produced broadcasts are designed specifically for the monstrous screen, creating an experience akin to sitting courtside. Each venue also has a sports bar-like area with wall-to-wall LED displays ("The Hall") and a rooftop terrace ("The Deck").

"We call it 'Shared Reality' — the convergence of all this immersive technology with the energy in the room, the collective of the fans, the high-fiving and cheering. People stand up for the national anthem in Cosm. They do the wave. And that's really what we're offering."

Production: One important thing to understand is that Cosm isn't simply taking the TV feed and displaying it on a massive screen. The company installs their own immersive cameras on-site to capture the action and produces the broadcasts themselves.

"It's typically a 4-6 camera set up, and our goal is to stay out of the way of the linear production. These are unmanned, loaf of bread-sized cameras, so that's how we're able to get them under the goalposts, under the basket and in these unique positions. You know the pylon cameras you see during football games on Saturdays and Sundays? That's us. We do a lot of that work."

Programming: Sports is a big part of Cosm's strategy, and the company has partnerships with all the major leagues and broadcasters (including CBS Sports and TNT Sports, which means they'll have March Madness). But the Los Angeles and Dallas venues offer other kinds of content, too.

"We think about programming like a TV channel might, where live sports is that anchor, but then you fill in the rest. That means entertainment. That means music. We have an incredible Cirque de Soleil program that puts you on stage, underwater, on trapeze. We have studios programming immersive, experiential art."

Looking ahead: "The goal within the next five years is wherever we travel in the world, fans have heard of Cosm," says Terry. "I don't know the upward limit of how many venues we can have, but I know there are certain markets where we could have three or four. So I do feel like there's a long runway here, and that's our race right now: get that scale. And we're moving as fast as we can."

⛳️ Cosm in action: Golf in "Shared Reality"

Cosm partnered with the PGA Tour to present this week's Players Championship in "Shared Reality" at its two venues, where attendees will get the full TPC Sawgrass experience from thousands of miles away.

Golf on the big screen: "The Dome" features unique camera positions on the 16th, 17th and 18th holes, including a never-before-seen perspective of the iconic Island Green (thanks to the camera rig above). For those wanting hole-by-hole coverage, live feeds of every group are broadcast on the wall-to-wall LED displays in "The Hall."

• To enhance the experience, Cosm has concession options that mirror the refreshments at TPC Sawgrass, including the event’s flagship cocktail, the "Sawgrass Splash." The PGA Tour Superstore is also on-site selling The Players merchandise and apparel.

• Cosm has mobile gaming stations at both venues where attendees can play PGA Tour 2K25, and TGL's Los Angeles Golf Club set up a mobile Dryvebox simulator at the L.A. location to give fans the chance to play the Island Green on No. 17 themselves.

What they're saying: "Part of the thesis of what we do is transporting people to places they otherwise couldn't get to and democratizing access to events," says Peter Murphy, Cosm's SVP of Content & Media. "Not everyone can get over to Sawgrass, so we want to export that experience to Dallas and L.A. and make attendees feel like they're in Florida watching golf."

Sunday should be epic: The last three holes at Sawgrass are among the most famous in golf, and Cosm will be delivering the final round drama in a way that's never been seen before. "I can't wait for Sunday in The Dome," says Tom Jeffs, the PGA Tour's VP of Media Business Development.

"The buzz of electricity on those last three holes is really compelling, and the immersive broadcast and unique camera positions will only add to the excitement and fear as you watch players take on the 17th hole with birdie on the line — but also triple-bogey in play," says Jeffs.

"When you're in The Dome, it's going to feel like you're on the green with Scottie Scheffler as he stands over a putt to take the lead. The scale makes him look like he's 6-foot-3, which is what he is in real life. And the mic system we have plugged into the Cosm cameras will provide a sense of presence as you hear the nervous murmur of the crowd as guys debate what shot to hit."

Pricing: If you wanted to watch The Players today at Cosm Los Angeles, tickets currently start at $25 for Dome Reserved and $11 for General Admission, which gets you access to standing room areas and first-come, first-served seating in The Hall and on The Deck.

First of many? We'll see how this weekend goes, but it certainly sounds like this partnership could expand far beyond The Players. "There's a lot of enthusiasm on both sides to extend this to additional events," says Jeffs. "We're exploring future golf tournaments," added Murphy.

🏀 Which past hoop stars would have earned the most NIL money?

From Yahoo Sports' Jeff Eisenberg:

With the NCAA tournament tipping off in less than a week and the landscape of college athletics evolving so rapidly, Yahoo Sports sought to tackle an intriguing question: Which past men's college basketball legends would have earned the most money in the modern NIL era?

To answer that, we asked eight experts in the NIL space to rank their top candidates. The only rules were to keep it strictly to men's basketball players from after the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

The top 8:

1. Zion Williamson, Duke (2018-19)

2. The Fab Five, Michigan (1991-93)

3. Shaquille O'Neal, LSU (1989-92)

4. Christian Laettner, Duke (1988-92)

5. Anthony Davis, Kentucky (2011-12)

6. Joakim Noah, Florida (2004-07)

7. Stephen Curry, Davidson (2006-09)

8. Jimmer Fredette, BYU (2007-11)

Read the full story.

📺 Watchlist: Selection Sunday

Get your brackets ready. The final 17 men's and 14 women's automatic bids will be determined this weekend ahead of Selection Sunday. The men's bracket will be revealed first (6pm ET, CBS), followed by the women's bracket (8pm, ESPN).

More to watch:

• 🏀 NBA: Lakers at Nuggets (Fri. 9:30pm, NBA); Knicks at Warriors (Sat. 8:30pm, ABC); Magic at Cavaliers (Sun. 1pm, ABC); Suns at Lakers (Sun. 3:30pm, ABC); Thunder at Bucks (Sun. 9pm, ESPN)

• 🏒 NHL: Stars at Jets (Fri. 8pm, NHL); Devils at Penguins (Sat. 3pm, ABC); Golden Knights at Red Wings (Sun. 1pm, TNT); Stars at Avalanche (Sun. 3pm, TNT)

• ⛳️ PGA: The Players Championship (Fri-Sun, Golf/NBC) … Lucas Glover, Camilo Villegas and J.J. Spaun (-6) are tied for the lead after Round 1.

• ⚽️ NWSL: Orlando vs. Chicago (Fri. 8pm, Prime); Kansas City vs. Portland (Sat. 12:45pm, ABC); Angel City vs. San Diego (Sun. 6:50pm, ESPN2) … Opening weekend.

• 🏁 F1: Australian Grand Prix (Sat. 11:55pm, ESPN) … Season-opening race in Melbourne.

• 🎾 Tennis: Indian Wells (Fri-Sun, Tennis) … Women's semifinals today, men's on Saturday and both finals on Sunday.

• ⚽️ EFL Cup: Liverpool vs. Newcastle (Sun. 12:30pm, Paramount+) … Final at Wembley.

• 🏉 Six Nations: Final Matchday (Sat. 10:15am-4pm, Peacock) … France, England and Ireland all remain in contention for the title.

• 🏀 Unrivaled: Laces vs. Rose (Sun. 7:30pm, TNT); Vinyl vs. Lunar Owls (Sun. 8:30pm, TNT) … The winners will meet in Monday's championship.

Plus… MLS Week 4 (Sat-Sun, Apple); NASCAR at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (Sun. 3:30pm, FS1); MLB Spring Breakout (Fri-Sun, MLB/MLB.TV); PWHL (Sat-Sun, YouTube); Overtime Elite Finals (Fri-Sun, YouTube).

🏎️ Formula 1 trivia

Question: Who was the last driver not named Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton to win the Formula 1 championship?

Hint: 2016, Mercedes.

Answer at the bottom.

🏒 "It's just business, son"

Will MacKinnon was traded from the Utica Comets (Devils AHL affiliate) to the Cleveland Monsters (Blue Jackets AHL affiliate) on Thursday.

Why am I telling you about a minor league hockey trade? Because he was traded by his father, Dan, who is the Comets general manager. And he was traded for future considerations, which could ultimately mean that he was traded for nothing in return. Brutal!

Trivia answer: Nico Rosberg

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