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NBA’s Magic Leap app lets you watch basketball in augmented reality

Fans can now watch live games, replays, and highlights on multiple screens.

Basketball fans can now experience the game in augmented reality. The NBA now has a mixed-reality app for the Magic Leap One headset that will allow for a wide range of immersive features. Fans with the mixed-reality headset can now view live NBA games, game replays, and highlights across multiple virtual "screens."

The app includes team vs. team and player vs. player stats comparisons or highlights. It will even allows you to scale the screens to any size or move their location. Live games are only available on the app for NBA League Pass and NBA Single-Game subscribers. But an extra catalog of on-demand content is available on the NBA app even for those without subscriptions.

The NBA announced it was teaming up with the AR startup last year at Recode's Code Media conference. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that partnering with Magic Leap would allow the NBA to make traditional sports more interactive (as Twitch has done for esports) and appeal to more younger viewers. But even older audiences have grown used to watching the game on television while browsing stats or Twitter reactions on their smartphones or laptops. An augmented reality app for the NBA will just condense the "second screen" viewing habits of most modern sports fans onto one platform -- which could be an easy sell for many basketball fans, regardless of generation.