Manchester City, one of the biggest names in English club football and the defending Premier League champions is all set to enter the metaverse. The football club has partnered with Sony to build a virtual replica of Etihad, its home stadium.
The virtual stadium is supposed to be the team's central hub in the metaverse--a virtual world that can be accessed through headsets and hand controllers using various technologies like artificial intelligence, virtual reality (VR) and blockchain.
While the project is still in its early phases, teams of the company's specialists have already visited the Etihad Stadium — Manchester City's home ground — to map it digitally and construct a VR version of it.
As per a Cointelegraph report, thanks to image analysis and skeletal-tracking technology developed by Hawk-Eye, a subsidiary of Sony, the Etihad will be transformed into a major centre of the club in a VR environment.
Officials from Manchester City who are working on the project foresee a day when the virtual Eithad Stadium would be full to capacity, allowing supporters who may not be able to travel to Manchester, to watch live games from the comfort of their own homes, wherever they are in the world.
The seven-time English Premier League champions are also exploring the possibility of fans meeting players in the metaverse and purchasing products unavailable in the physical world. It is likely that purchases will be made using cryptocurrencies.
Speaking to i News, Nuria Tarre, City Football Group's chief marketing and fan engagement officer, said, "The whole point we could imagine of having a metaverse is you can recreate a game, you could watch the game live, you're part of the action in a different way through different angles and you can fill the stadium as much as you want because it's unlimited, it's completely virtual."