Jeremy Devine

The live 3-D broadcast of Thursday’s Bowl Championship Series at the Rave theater made you “feel like you were on the field,” one local football fan said.

“It was killer, man,” said Percy Eaves of East Ridge, who was one of more than 100 people who attended the first live showing of a 3-D nationwide sporting event at a local venue.

The Rave theater was one of 81 theaters in the country that showed the game between the University of Florida and the University of Oklahoma, which was shot with about 20 new 3-D enabled cameras and streamed via satellite to local theaters, according to Jeremy Devine, vice president of marketing for Dallas-based Rave Motion Pictures.

He said the event is the first of at least two such events planned for the local Rave but likely marks “a whole shift on the kind of entertainment that will be offered in movie theaters.”

Mr. Devine said at least 14 3-D movies are scheduled to open in theaters this year, and the opportunity exists to broadcast live major entertainment.

“Now we have the opportunity to show it digitally and stream it live,” he said.

The Rave theater’s other scheduled live 3-D sports broadcast will be NBA All-Star Saturday Night Live on Feb. 14. The event, set for 8 p.m. on the day before the NBA All-Star Game, will feature the three-point, slam dunk and skills contests.

Licensing agreements will be the key to additional events such as NFL games and University of Tennessee football away games, Mr. Devine said.

“It’s a fairly complicated set of negotiations,” he said, but “that’s the next logical step.”

Mr. Eaves, 29, a University of Florida fan, said the $25 price for the BCS game was “about right” since the game featured a team he was interested in, but he probably wouldn’t go otherwise.

He and other viewers wore specially made polarized lenses to view the game. They weren’t the paper-wrapped red and blue lenses used in previous 3-D screenings.

Mr. Devine said the Rave already had a 3-D digital projector, a 3-D lens and a highly reflective, 45-foot screen. To receive the broadcast, they had to add a layer of satellite dish decoder boxes, he said.

NEXT UP

What: NBA All-Star Saturday Night Live.

When: 8 p.m. Feb. 14.

Where: Rave theater, 5080 South Terrace.

Admission: $15.

Phone: 855-9652.