What is it like being an NBA bubble virtual fan and is it worth doing?

While stuck at home we have all been watching the NBA bubble, but how many of us have attended? Is being a virtual fan any fun and is it worth the hassle?

Being an Australian NBA fan the only time I’ve ever seen current NBA All-stars was live when Team USA played the Australian (national team) Boomers in an exhibition game in Melbourne, Australia in late 2019 as a warm-up to the FIBA World Cup. This was an awesome experience as Spurs guard and Boomer Patty Mills dropped 30 against the likes of Jayson Tatum, Kemba Walker and Donovan Mitchell.

I thought my next NBA-like experience would be either related to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics or an expensive and 16-and-a-half-hour flight to Los Angeles.

As we all know the NBA Bubble has had virtual fans in it since day one and it has been a unique experience watching people ‘attend’ games in the new COVID-19 normal world. For someone who’s never actually attended an NBA (and now it looks like I won’t be attending one for a long time), I thought it would be an interesting experience to try it as I never imagined my first NBA game being on my couch in my family home in Australia.

Fortunately, I got a ticket to a game, and not just any game. It happened to be a historic Game 7 with the Denver Nuggets coming back from 3-1 deficit against what was many people’s title favorites: The Los Angeles Clippers.

The process is simple enough, you get your virtual ticket from a vendor and you are provided with a username and password to login into a Microsoft teams account. From there you are told the codes of conduct and there are two different moderators to help anyone who has any issues. From that point, it’s jump ball and the game is on from wherever you are in the world.

To watch the game and yourself in the seats with the rest of your section in the NBA bubble makes the actual viewing experience somewhat poor, the size of the game screen is roughly like sticky taping your phone to a laptop screen.

The feed you are shown is the actual live feed as all other broadcasts are delayed by 15 seconds so you couldn’t watch the game on a full screen to your side while still reacting and being involved as a virtual fan.

The experience itself it is quite fun, you can hear and speak with everyone in your section (roughly 20 people) and according to the moderator you can be heard on the actual court itself, which I doubt would actually be heard but it does encourage the virtual fans to chant and such. As you can imagine it’s filled with NBA fans so there can be some thoughtful discussion and banter about each team as the game goes along.

The experience itself is enjoyable and I will remember doing this in the future, I applaud the NBA and Microsoft for setting this up and making it honestly very accessible for non-tech savvy people.

The synopsis is… Is the virtual fan experience the optimal way to watch a game? No. Is it fun for novelty sake? Yes.

Would I do it again? No.

I recommend this experience and I got very lucky to get a ticket as it is first come first serve but overall if you are an NBA fan it’s worth doing at least once.