- Digbeth, Birmingham, chosen for new venue with eight more planned across UK
- Atmos VR providing expertise and vision for new public entertainment venture
- £1million investment secured for new VR business, expanding on B2B credentials
Atmos VR has announced plans to open a new multiplayer ‘free roaming’ interactive game which has been developed with post-COVID audiences in mind and will offer restricted numbers of players in socially-distanced entertainment across the one-hour shows.
The new venue in the West Midlands, will be the first of eight planned to be rolled-out across the country over the next five years. As a UK first, the venue will offer free-roaming four-dimensional experiences with senses enhanced on every level. This could include: moving floors, the ability to feel things around you, pick up and touch virtual objects in the game and smell the atmosphere.
Founder, and event technology strategist, Kevin Blair, brings long-term military and commercial expertise in the VR space that he has spent the last three years developing the concept.
Kevin Blair, explains “Atmos VR’s aim is to bring creative content to life using the latest immersive technology, constantly evolving VR and beyond and pushing the experiential boundaries of immersive experiences. According to a recent study3, three-quarters (76%) of immersive entertainment companies successfully have attendance up to 10,000 per year, meaning we can provide immersive experiences aimed at smaller audiences who are already seeking a more personal setting.
The immersive entertainment industry was valued in 2018 at more than $4.5 billion2 globally. Currently there are around 5,700 locations worldwide where consumers can experience VR outside of their home. This number is expected to rise8 to 45,700 by the end of 2022.
Bob Clarke, CEO, Samahoma Media Advisors, who negotiated the £1m investment from Insight Media Fund explains: “As part of the Fund’s focus on media investments for a post-COVID world, bringing back live events is very much on its agenda and free-roaming VR provides a genuine antidote to the reasonable lingering fears people may have of being part of an uncontrolled large audience crowd. Atmos VR has developed a cutting-edge proposition with plenty of hooks for repeat visits - with the Fund’s support we believe it can be scaled for a UK-wide rollout and international franchise opportunities.”
There are five million people living in the West Midlands providing a focused audience during Tiered restrictions and Birmingham4 has been named the most entrepreneurial UK city outside of London with more than 14,500 business start-ups in 2019. Contracts have been finalised for a 10,000 sq. ft. warehouse at the Custard Factory in the Digbeth Canal Corridor regeneration zone. Once the first LBE (location based entertainment) venue has been established, Atmos VR will be looking to expand across the country with locations in Tyne & Wear, Yorkshire, Merseyside, Glasgow, Cardiff and the South East being considered.
Atmos VR is set to join the largest regional tech and digital cluster outside of London, with the West Midlands Combined Authority area now home to 66,300 people employed across 12,500 tech and digital companies5. The West Midlands Region economy is worth more than £141.4 billion6.
Spending in the recreation sector was £10.5 billion7 in the UK in 2018. Whilst investment in the public entertainment sector has tended to focus on the heritage and family offering, there is enormous scope within the commercial sector to develop innovative and targeted high tech experiences for gamers and other younger audiences . The Fund hopes to help unlock opportunities in this sector.
- ATMOS VR (www.atmosvr.com)
- SAMAHOMA MEDIA ADVISORS (www.samahoma-ma.com)
-Ends-
Notes to editors:
ATMOS VR was founded by Kevin Blair in 2016, to supply creative solutions in a virtual world. Kevin is the Birmingham Chapter President of the VR/AR Association.
SAMAHOMA MEDIA ADVISORS Ltd is investment advisor to INSIGHT MEDIA FUND. Its Advisory team is made up of experienced professionals from across the entertainment sector value chain, including but not limited to, Development, Financing, Production, Distribution and Rights Exploitation. The team with its many years of experience has a wide professional network from which to identify and source investment ready opportunities. SAMAHOMA MEDIA ADVISORS has already allocated £2.4m investments across media and entertainment businesses since the start of the year, on behalf of INSIGHT MEDIA FUND, (including previously announced Stephen Graham’s Boiling Point and Ross McCall’s Ire). It is making a substantial investment in the VR business, having committed £1m of funds to that sector, alone.
INSIGHT MEDIA FUND invests in media projects which have a defined audience potential and VR is an opportunity to achieve that. SAMAHOMA MEDIA ADVISORS search on behalf of the Fund led them to ATMOS VR. The focus of INSIGHT MEDIA FUND is to invest in a balanced portfolio of Digital Media, Film, TV, Music and Live Event Entertainment Content held by single purpose businesses and other investment opportunities which can provide capital growth. The Fund invests in these opportunities through the purchase of equity, the purchase of secured debt or through a combination involving the use of mezzanine finance. In all cases, the fund looks to take security and wherever possible in the form of tangible assets. A cash liquidity buffer is maintained to ensure that redemptions can be made.
BOB CLARKE, SAMAHOMA MEDIA ADVISORS, CEO has 40 years’ experience creating, funding, running Media and Entertainment properties, B2B and B2C, in the UK, US and China. Initially a live event and independent TV producer of game shows and alternative comedy series and specials, his company was acquired by Virgin Group plc after which he created private satellite TV networks for BMW and 20 other corporations, launched two subscription TV channels for Sky, pioneered the UK’s largest out-of-home digital screen advertising network, and partnered with Liberty Media to do the same in the US and China. He has worked on dot com start-ups and IPOs and advised Chernin Entertainment’s Otter Media on branding its OTT platforms. Now he is creating multiplatform entertainment projects through SAMAHOMA - a world-touring rock music show, feature films, an immersive theatre show and YouTube Creator projects where he is developing 360-degree ‘real world’ offerings for these screen-only stars.
WEST MIDLANDS GAMING: The West Midlands is a leading player in the UK’s gaming industry. A high concentration in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, has seen the cluster be dubbed ‘Silicon Spa’, with globally renowned studios such as Codemasters, Playground Games, and SEGA Hardlight all based in the area.
2019 IMMERSIVE DESIGN REPORT ON XR: LBE: The Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) industry (together XR) is a global industry, divided into location-based entertainment (LBE) and home device markets. This technology-driven industry saw more than $1 billion of investments in 20171. The VR LBE market was valued at $1.2 billion in 2018, while the XR home device market was valued at $mi billion in 2018, a combined $3 billion market. The XR market includes significant contributions from video games, movies, television, live events, and marketing, all of which fall under the Immersive Entertainment Industry domain.
The Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (XR) markets are less clear, with recent industry projections for VR Location-Based Entertainment widely ranging from becoming an $800 million market in 2022 (which by some estimates it already surpassed) to a massive $12 billion market in 2023. Either way, growth is in its future. Regardless, it's a certainty that XR continues to be a hot offering for new experience seekers, particularly those who are intrigued by new technologies. As Oculus and HTC refine their groundbreaking headsets to be lighter and easier to use, Sony has made great strides in bringing Playstation VR into homes with more than 4 million units sold to date. 26 Augmented Reality has been a hot topic with smartphones, but it remains to be seen if innovation-leaders Magic Leap can back up the $2.3 billion they've received in investments, especially following Microsoft's lackluster launch of their HoloLens device with a mere 50,000 units sold to date.
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) last year formed their own Immersive Entertainment Advisory Group consisting of industry experts from the US and UK with the goal of assessing the impact of immersive entertainment with an eye toward creating better learning experiences . The group is largely focused on VR experiences, including experts from Disney, Magic Leap, Google, Microsoft, Sony, HTC, Paramount, Oculus, and ILMxLAB.
, 3 Source: 2019 Immersive Design Summit Report
4 Source: Centre for Entrepreneurs
5, 6 Source: ONS 2018
7 Source: Experian estimate for ‘Recreational and Sporting Services’ 2018
2, 8 Source: Greenlight Insights