One Venue, Multiple Business Modes: The Thinking Behind Immersive Sports Bar

The Background 

How Eloy González designed a sports hospitality concept around customer experience, content flexibility and multiple operating scenarios 

People still want to watch sport together.  What has changed is the standard against which a venue is judged. Large televisions are common at home, and most major sporting events can be watched without leaving the living room.

For Eloy González, the opportunity was therefore not to build another bar with more screens. It was to create an experience that could not be reproduced at home, regardless of how large the television might be.

That idea became Immersive Sports Bar, a hospitality concept developed under Barraco Partners S.L. in the Canary Islands —  

📍Immersive Sports Bar – Sports Pub & Bar

The venue uses six BenQ ultra-short-throw laser projectors to create a room-scale visual environment. Yet the project was not defined by the projector count. It was defined by the different ways Eloy wanted the business to operate.

He wanted more than one display scenario, but:

• one continuous immersive canvas for major sporting events
• several sources shown within the same venue
• different display formats for different walls or areas
• seamless transitions between content scenes
• private events, sponsor activity and themed use outside major matches

The technology was selected around those operating requirements.

A Reason to Leave the Living Room

Eloy’s starting observation was simple: people enjoy watching sport together, but the traditional sports bar has changed very little.

The screen may be larger and the image may be sharper, but the audience is still normally seated in front of a collection of displays.

Immersive Sports Bar was intended to change that relationship.

“I wanted to create something that could not be replicated at home, regardless of how large a television someone owns.”

Instead of asking customers to focus on one screen, the concept places the event around them. The room becomes part of the experience.

The objective was not merely to increase image size. It was to create excitement from the moment customers entered, strengthen the emotional connection with the event and encourage people to experience the match as a group.

For hospitality owners, this distinction matters.

A venue is no longer competing only with other bars. It is also competing with the comfort, convenience and image quality available at home.

The commercial value therefore has to come from something different: atmosphere, shared attention, social interaction and the sense that an important match has become an occasion.

Why the Canary Islands Created the Right Market

The Canary Islands offered a suitable audience for this type of concept.

The region receives large numbers of visitors from the United Kingdom, Germany, Scandinavia and other European countries. Many travel during major sporting events and still want to follow the teams, drivers, athletes and competitions they support.

At the same time, the venue was not designed exclusively for tourists.

Eloy also wanted to attract local residents, groups of friends, sports enthusiasts, private events, corporate functions, audiences following different sports.

Football is central, but the potential content also includes Formula 1, boxing, rugby and other events with their own audiences and schedules.

This creates a more varied operating environment.

Different nationalities follow different competitions. Different sports take place on different days and at different times. Private functions and themed events can use the venue outside major live broadcasts.

The business opportunity was therefore not based on one audience or one type of match. It was based on the ability to adapt the room to different groups and occasions.

The Experience Became the Product

Eloy wanted customers to feel that the event had already begun when they entered the venue.

Pre-match visuals could build anticipation. Stadium environments and themed content could establish atmosphere before the live broadcast became the central focus. During the match, the projection system could direct the entire room toward one shared event.

The aim was not to reproduce a stadium literally. It was to bring some of the emotional and social qualities of live sport into a hospitality environment.

“Customers become part of the atmosphere rather than passive spectators.”

According to Eloy’s observations, customers tend to spend more time inside the bar, interact more with one another and participate more actively in the atmosphere. The visual impact also encourages people to take photos and videos. These moments are often shared, extending the visibility of the experience beyond the venue itself.

These are first-hand observations rather than quantified commercial results. No percentage increase in dwell time, spending or social reach has been established. They are still meaningful because they indicate that the visual environment may affect customer behaviour, not only visual quality.

For a venue owner, that is the more relevant question: Does the technology change the way customers use the space?

Content as an Operating Tool

Live sport remains the core of the concept, but the content strategy extends beyond the live feed.

Before the match

Pre-match visuals, stadium atmospheres and themed content can build anticipation and give customers a reason to arrive before the event begins.

During the match

For major events, the full room can operate as one immersive canvas, concentrating shared attention on a single competition.

Outside major matches

The same environment can support:

• ambient visuals
• private events
• sponsor activity
• themed nights
• different content on selected walls
• several simultaneous sports feeds

Content is therefore not treated only as something to display. It becomes a tool for changing how the venue operates.

One Venue, Multiple Business Modes

Content flexibility was one of Eloy’s key business brief.  Immersive Sports Bar was not intended to operate only as a fixed six-projector panorama. The venue needed to support several scenarios from the beginning.

Full immersive mode

One source is presented across the complete six-projector environment as one continuous canvas.  This mode is intended for the events where the whole room shares one focus.

Flexible multi-content mode

Different sources can be arranged within the same environment, allowing selected walls or image areas to support different content.

The difference is commercial as much as visual.  A fixed immersive system serves one primary use. A flexible environment allows the same physical space to support several types of business activity.

How the Business Brief Defined the System Architecture

When Eloy’s operating requirements were translated into a technical brief, the system needed to support:

• full immersive playback
• mehrere Quellen
• multiple display formats
• multi-view arrangements
• seamless scene changes
• six-projector geometry and blending

GeoBox therefore proposed one G901 front-end processor together with two M813 multi-projector processors as one integrated architecture.

The G901 manages the content side of the system:

• source selection
• multi-view composition
• scene arrangement
• nahtloses Umschalten

The two M813 processors manage the projector side:

• six output channels
• image allocation
• geometry correction
• Schären
• overlap
• Kantenmischung

The G901 controls what the audience sees and how the sources are arranged. The two M813 processors control how that scene is mapped across the six-projector environment.  The architecture followed the business requirement.

Turning the Idea Into a Real Space

The venue uses six BenQ ultra-short-throw laser projectors.

UST projection met a practical requirement: large image coverage from a short installation distance. This is important where projector positions are limited or where the system must reduce the risk of people casting shadows across the image.

The more demanding part was the calibration.

UST projection is highly sensitive to wall-surface variation. Even small deviations in flatness can create visible local distortion, especially near image edges.

In a six-projector edge-blending system, those edges must align with the overlap areas of adjacent images.

The final result therefore depended heavily on the on-site work of Alexis and the Grupo Visual Canarias team, supported by imaginArt.

Their contribution included:

• projector placement
• geometry alignment
• overlap matching
• evaluation of local wall-related distortion
• practical handover of the completed system

GeoBox provided the adjustment tools, but engineering judgement determined how those tools were applied.

For another venue owner, this is an important lesson: selecting equipment is only one part of the project. The integration team must also understand the intended customer experience and the different ways the space will be operated.

What Other Venue Owners Can Learn

Immersive Sports Bar does not suggest that every hospitality venue should install six projectors. 

Its broader lesson is more useful:

• Define the operating scenarios first: 

Before selecting technology, define how the venue should be used during major events, quieter periods, private functions and mixed-content occasions.

• Do not design only for the peak event

A system designed only for the largest match may remain underused during the rest of the week.

• Treat content flexibility as a business requirement

Different content formats can support different audiences, events and revenue opportunities.

• Make the technology serve the operating model

The display system should support the way the business wants to work, rather than forcing the business into one fixed technical format.

From a Visual Installation to a Hospitality Concept

Eloy sees further potential for immersive entertainment within hospitality, including: additional locations, private events, premium sports experiences, new content formats, further combinations of live sport and immersive environments.

More broadly, he believes customers increasingly seek experiences rather than products.

Immersive Sports Bar is one example of how technology can help a traditional hospitality space become a destination.

The project was not designed around one projector configuration. It was designed around the different ways Eloy wanted the venue to operate.

Six BenQ UST projectors created the visual environment. One GeoBox G901 and two M813 processors supported the required content and display modes. Alexis, Grupo Visual Canarias and imaginArt translated the concept into a working physical space.

The result is not simply a sports bar with a larger image.  It is one venue designed to support multiple business modes.

Project Roles

• Concept and venue: Eloy González / Immersive Sports Bar
• System integration and installation: Alexis / Grupo Visual Canarias
• Technical support: imaginArt
• Projektion: Six BenQ UST laser projectors
• Front-end processing: GeoBox G901
• Multi-projector processing: Two GeoBox M813 processors

Technical Companion

For a detailed explanation of the signal chain, multi-view processing, six-projector mapping and on-site geometry calibration, read:

Von einer Leinwand zu mehreren Szenen: Die Systemarchitektur hinter der immersiven Sportbar