Behind the Scenes with Meta Quest at NBA All-Star Weekend
Damian Lillard, the superstar Portland Trail Blazers guard, was having a great weekend in Salt Lake City. He’d just won the NBA’s prestigious 3-point contest and the next day, poured in 26 points during the league’s annual All-Star Game. But in between those stellar performances, on a stage just blocks away, he met his match.
Welcome to Meta Quest at NBA All-Star Weekend.
There, at NBA Crossover, Dame had strapped on a Meta Quest 2 headset for a Beat Saber showdown with TikTok influencer LSToast, one of the world’s best players of the hit VR game. On the line? Bragging rights and, of course, a championship belt.
Dame hadn’t gone into battle alone. He’d partnered with content creator, Taylor Pierce, the winner of a Beat Saber tournament the day before featuring eight basketball influencers. And while Dame is used to schooling inferior players on the hardcourt, he was the one on the receiving end of some of LSToast’s education that day. Decent players will score in the hundreds of thousands of points, but LSToast routinely soars into the millions.
“Dame was in shock and awe at how amazing of a Beat Saber player LSToast is,” says Beck Bruton, Social & Influencer Manager for Meta Quest. “At one point, he said, ‘I’m sure you’re just playing a video of perfect Beat Saber gameplay and Toast is just moving his arms around. This can’t be real.’”
But it was Dame who got the last laugh. After his Beat Saber smackdown, he challenged LSToast to a VR boxing match and delivered a knockout blow, ultimately earning himself a Meta Quest championship belt. And it provided a signature moment for Meta Quest’s three separate activations at All-Star Weekend: the Creator House, at NBA Crossover, and the NBA Tech Summit.
The NBA and Meta have worked together for some time, and the league’s annual mid-season tentpole event is the perfect place to lean into and support that partnership, says Nick Robinson, Integrated Marketing Manager, Brand at Meta.
This wasn’t the first time Meta made an appearance at All-Star Weekend. But the team decided to significantly up the ante this year to raise even more awareness for the Meta Quest brand.
That’s why the activations Robinson and his team put together were designed to be highly relevant to the many NBA fans who showed up during All-Star Weekend to see what Meta Quest is all about. They included the chance to play sports-related VR games like GOLF+ and Creed: Rise to Glory, a demo of the VR experience of sitting courtside at an NBA game, and watching creators deeply tied to the basketball ecosystem play Beat Saber. And that final showdown between Dame, LSToast, and Taylor Piercewas just “icing on the cake,” Robinson says.
For Bruton, putting together the Beat Saber tournament was a whirlwind project, pulled off in just weeks, and requiring some serious juggling, as the team worked to sign up needle-moving creators and Dame.
The idea was to bring in a series of creators with experience generating basketball-related content, and that by necessity meant a group of people who’ve crossed paths many times before and some of whom are even friends. The goal was to get them to post content before, during, and after All-Star Weekend as “a storyline that we take three, four, or five days to play out with our community,” Bruton says. “We’re taking them on a journey.”
Part of that was showcasing their preparation for the tournament, so the creators shared their training routines, including showing themselves in-headset practicing their Beat Saber skills. Many took the competition seriously enough that they also adopted fitness routines—push ups, running, going to the gym, and eating healthier.
And once the tournament began, since many of the creators are friends (and friendly rivals),
they treated the audience to some NBA-level trash talk, with the competitors teasing each other about their muscles, their training regimens, and even about who’d been slacking off.
Beat Saber is one of the best-known and best-selling VR games, so it made perfect sense to showcase it in order to boost interest in Meta Quest. But when it came to choosing other games for NBA Crossover attendees to try, Robinson decided to think a bit outside the box.
Given that most visitors were NBA fans, the thought was that they were probably interested in other sports as well. So the team selected sports-related experiences with organic ties to the NBA and to All-Star Weekend.
For many NBA players, golf is a second sport, so the team selected GOLF+ as the first experience. For the second, for several reasons, they chose Creed: Rise to Glory. To begin with, the latest film in the Creed series was about to hit theaters. Further, a number of NBA players box to help stay in shape—among them, Damian Lillard. Even better, in Dame’s case, he’s known to post videos of himself boxing in VR using a Meta Quest 2.
“Being able to have that tie-in just allowed us to have authenticity,” Robinson says. “It wasn’t just a standard athlete appearance. ... It was him saying, ‘Yeah, that’s dope. I want to come be a part of it.’”
As perhaps the most tech-savvy professional sports league in the world, the NBA is always trying to identify the newest innovations that can move the industry forward, as well as bringing the people behind those innovations together. That’s why the NBA has for years hosted an annual Tech Summit. For this year’s edition, Meta was the only brand partner onsite, says Robinson, in part because of how topical VR and the metaverse are right now. “Knowing that at the Tech Summit, they’re talking about the future state of sports and technology,” says Robinson, “it felt like a very nice fit for us.”
Many of those on hand at Tech Summit are senior-level executives seeking exposure to the latest and greatest technology that can improve their businesses. And for Meta, that’s Meta Quest Pro.
To encourage Tech Summit attendees to demo the cutting-edge headset, Robinson’s team placed several on tables for people to try between panels or networking sessions. And for Robinson, the best part of the experience was watching their attitude change upon experiencing Meta Quest Pro’s industry-leading mixed reality technology. “A lot of people would go into the headset and say, ‘Hey, I don’t have a lot of time because I need to get back,’” he says. “And then they’d try it out and say, ‘You know what? I can make some more time.’”
