July 9, 2024, Jackson, Mississippi – On 25 and 26 June 2024, frontline workers, supervisors, and managers at Mercedes Benz Stadium were the first to participate in the ASPIRE (Action – Study – Prepare – Inspire – Rise – Be Exceptional), a training program jointly developed by the Innovation Institute for Fan Experience (IIFX) in partnership with Intel Corporation, Dell Technologies, PIXO VR, with the support of VRARA Member PIXO XR and the National Minority Emerging and Innovative Technologies Consortium.
“The ASPIRE initiative is designed to deliver industry-relevant skills training to the multi-generational sports and entertainment industry frontline staff, supervisors, and managers using virtual reality technology. This joint initiative addresses a skills gap for the sports and entertainment workforce,” said Dr. Lou Marciani, the Director and Co-Founder of IIFX.
ASPIRE provides workers with virtual reality training from PIXO that enables them to easily access effective immersive training to enhance their professional competencies and capabilities. The program provides sports and entertainment workers access to relevant, curated content through NextGen technology to help them grow their skills, increase their competency, and enhance their capabilities for current and future roles. IIFX chose to partner with PIXO as they are focused on helping workers win at work, and their patented platform that can support this kind of scale.
Virtual reality training delivers a fully immersive and interactive learning experience. This training, in topics such as conflict resolution and other skills, can engage workers, and help sports and entertainment venues recruit and retain a multi-generational workforce by providing transferable, highly marketable skills.
As with many sectors, the sports and entertainment industry, which released millions of workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, is trying new ways to recruit, train, and retain a multi-generational workforce in the post-pandemic era.
Workers should be confident that they have the skills they need to win in their work role. Critical to an inclusive post-pandemic job recovery is providing engaging training opportunities to develop essential skills to the people hardest hit by job losses, including lower income workers, women, and underserved and underrepresented groups.
“The IIFX purpose aligns well with PIXO’s,” says Sean Hurwitz, CEO and Founder of PIXO. “Our goal is to partner with the best companies in their field, like IIFX in sports and entertainment, and together empower employees to win at their jobs. Virtual reality training increases employee confidence, leading to reduced turnover, risk, and costs. Training in a realistic, interactive virtual environment quickly gives workers the experience to tackle those situations in the real world, whether it’s CPR, driving a forklift, or handling conflict. We are excited to partner with IIFX to see how training in Virtual Reality will impact the sports & entertainment industry.”
“We are thrilled to start the ASPIRE initiative with AMB Sports + Entertainment and Mercedes Benz Stadium’s outstanding team of frontline staff, supervisors, and managers. We are pleased to be here with PIXO, who is empowering the training concept with virtual reality courses and PICO XR, who is generously providing their amazing virtual reality headsets”, said Dr. Marciani.
The ASPIRE program will be delivered to four additional professional sports and entertainment venues in 2024, that host Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, National Basketball League, National Football League, and the Women’s National Basketball Association.
To get involved in the IIFX ASPIRE skilling initiative, contact IIFX, at marciani@iifx.org or info@iifx.org.
About PIXO VR
An industry leader for Extended Reality training solutions, PIXO is a pioneer in learning innovation, with service excellence and performance results to help companies—and their customers—win at work. PIXO’s dedication to innovative XR training that’s even easier to deploy, use and manage has resulted in our Reality Intelligence™ (RI) platform. RI offers global and large-scale training organizations the opportunity to add value to training offerings by giving users the ability to manage their portfolio of VR programs with unmatched flexibility, customization and ease. PIXO is turning Virtual Reality into A Winning Reality™.
About IIFX
Founded in August 2020, the Innovation Institute for Fan Experience (IIFX) is building the leading and most trusted authority on the ‘FAN JOURNEY’ for the sports & entertainment industry. IIFX provides training, industry content creation, FAN JOURNEY best practices, consultancy, and business and education services to domestic and international sports & entertainment organizations.
