Manchester City Partners With Sony to Build the First Football Stadium in the Metaverse

The club’s stadium, the Etihad, will be transformed into a central hub of Manchester City in a VR world.

By Shomik Sen Bhattacharjee | Updated: 22 February 2022 18:30 IST

Manchester City Partners With Sony to Build the First Football Stadium in the Metaverse

Photo Credit: Facebook/ Manchester City

Manchester City are working with Sony's VR team on the project

Highlights

Sony will employ image analysis, skeleton tracking for the project
Manchester City has signed a three-year deal with Sony
The club's officials see the project as a way to build fan engagement

Manchester City, one of the biggest names in English club football and the defending Premier League champions, are reportedly building the world's first football stadium inside the metaverse with help from virtual reality (VR) experts at Sony. The football club has signed a partnership with Sony on a three-year initiative, and 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.

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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."

"I think the traditional image of someone sitting on a sofa, watching a screen, is something we cannot imagine is going still be the reality not even in 10 years, maybe in five years' time already. Things move much faster than we think," Tarre added.

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