Shifting fan viewing patterns, new social-first leagues and big tech streaming platforms are all generational trends disrupting the traditional sports media landscape in real-time. As the new attention economy makes it harder than ever to engage fans, media broadcasters and rights holders must innovate with novel coverage in new channels to attract and retain fans.

Volumetric video is a 3D recording technology that captures real-world performances from all angles, allowing viewers to move freely within the scene and see it from any viewpoint. Unlike traditional or 360-degree video, volumetric video records a complete 3D volume, including accurate depth, color and lighting, creating a "hologram" of the original scene.

Broadcast-quality volumetric video of sports enables entirely new forms of coverage. A 3D copy of the action supports more engaging, immersive and customizable coverage in traditional broadcast media and empowers a diverse set of creators to reach their audiences in their own voice on social media. It is also the natural evolution of today’s data products such as ball trajectories and player skeletons, supporting more sophisticated insights and analysis for scouting, training, and health and safety.

Arcturus has created a volumetric video platform that captures and broadcasts sports action in full 3D. They redefine how we connect with our favorite sports moments by delivering compelling new camera angles for 2D broadcasters and new 3D sports experiences never possible before on mobile or immersive devices. Their SaaS platform monetizes the capture, processing, production and distribution of this content.

**L-R: Devin Horsman, CTO, Steve Sullivan, CEO, and Fraser McArthur, COO, attended our LDV Capital** **Annual General Meeting** **in 2025. ©Robert Wright**

Arcturus utilizes synchronized sensors positioned around the action to capture a wide range of viewpoints. Advanced AI and computer vision algorithms then fuse these perspectives into a seamless, high-quality interactive 3D reconstruction of the action. Content creators can use this technology with a free-roaming virtual camera, going anywhere in the play during the action, even showing the athletes’ perspective. Fans can see footage from this “impossible” camera in 2D channels or engage with the action in 3D on 2D screens and 3D headsets.

“Arcturus brings our fans onto the stage and into the match, right alongside the fighters and crew, even showing us their view of the action,” said Frank Lamicella, CEO of Thrill Sports, the parent company of Power Slap. “Their volumetric technology captures the real action in full 3D, delivering a fan experience we’ve never seen before.”

By moving out of the studio and into the field of play along with achieving broadcastable quality, Arcturus has unlocked holographic capture of sports and live events. This is the inflection point the team has worked a decade to achieve, where volumetric begins disrupting 2D and creating net-new 3D rights and experiences for sports and live events.

“It’s the natural evolution of 2D video and a whole new category of media rights for leagues to monetize. Capturing a 3D copy of the game transforms broadcast coverage, social media content, training and analysis and fan engagement,” said Steve Sullivan, Co-Founder and CEO of Arcturus.

**Image of a producer on set shooting and producing volumetric content. ©Arcturus Studio**

Arcturus’ team of 10 is a merger of the Microsoft volumetric business and the previous Arcturus team. Devin Horsman, CTO, was co-founder of the previous Arcturus business along with Ewan Johnson, Head of Physical Production.

They have been pioneering 3D volumetric video for the past decade, and before that had accomplished careers innovating at companies like ILM/Lucasfilm, Unity, Pixar, and Nvidia driving the state-of-the-art in 3D content for film, television and games. They’ve worked together for over a decade in different combinations, with proven track records delivering from R&D to product to the screen in A-list productions. Collectively they have four Academy Awards for Technology, Forbes 30 under 30, and dozens of papers and patents.

Steve, co-founder & CEO, most recently served as Partner and General Manager at Microsoft, where he founded and led the Mixed Reality Capture Studios program to produce holographic video of human performances for VR, AR and 2D applications. His team incubated the technology in Microsoft’s Startup Business Group, graduated to the HoloLens team for launch, then rebooted as a studio program in San Francisco to commercialize the technology widely. Their work has been used on hundreds of broadcast and mixed reality productions and experienced by hundreds of millions of viewers.

At LDV Capital, we invest in people building businesses powered by visual technology & artificial intelligence. We thrive on collaborating with deep tech teams leveraging computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data. We are the only venture capital firm with this thesis since 2012.

We are thrilled to partner with Arcturus as they deliver the future of live 3D broadcast quality sports coverage. 3D capture of real-world action represents a generational leap – one we explored extensively in our 2021 LDV Insights Report – transforming how fans experience events, how leagues create content and how media rights are defined in the era of immersive storytelling. It was only a matter of time before we found the brilliant team to deliver on this vision and we couldn’t be more excited to partner with true pioneers of volumetric video.

We at LDV Capital led their $2.3M seed round with participation from Myelin VC, Vanderbilt University and angel investors including Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of Greater New York. Kerry Flynn of Axios has more details.

The funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand marketing campaigns and launch pilot projects that bring immersive 3D experiences to live sports, with plans to eventually expand into concerts, theater and other live entertainment.

The U.S. live events market is projected to grow from $466 billion in 2025 to $651 billion by 2032, fueled by a rising demand for immersive, tech-enabled experiences. As sports and entertainment evolve, 3D coverage is becoming the next frontier – offering fans unprecedented realism while unlocking new monetization opportunities for leagues, broadcasters and sponsors.

Arcturus is the only solution in the market for live-action sports that is able to produce broadcast-quality 3D results. Looking forward, their ultimate mission is delivering live 3D simulcast of an entire event, consisting of processing and streaming end-to-end at the latency of a 2D broadcast. This is the holy grail for sports and entertainment media stakeholders.

**Mockup image of what volumetric content could look like in a broadcast studio environment. ©Arcturus Studio**

We look forward to helping Arcturus leverage our visual tech domain expertise, decades of experience building businesses and our vast network across media and entertainment.

Join our 12th Annual LDV Vision Summit (virtual) – the premier global gathering in visual tech and AI – on March 11, 2026, and meet Steve Sullivan to learn more about Arcturus.

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