MANCHESTER CITY are set to become the first football club in the world with a stadium inside the metaverse.
The Premier League team are joining up with Sony to help create a virtual reality version of the Eithad Stadium.
It will allow fans from all over the world to enjoy watching games at the venue without leaving their own homes.
The Eithad has a capacity of 55,097 in the physical world, with seats sold out for all major games.
But bosses at the club hope to be able to sell seats several times over in a metaverse virtual replica of the stadium.
Man City and Sony will collaborate to use image analysis and skeletal-tracking technologies created by Hawk-Eye to turn their vision into a reality.
The two companies have signed a three year deal for the work.
While it remains early days, Sony has already started its creation and visited the Manchester-based stadium to map it digitally and recreate it in virtual reality form.
“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,” Nuria Tarre, the chief marketing and fan engagement officer for Man City’s parent company said in a media interview.
“But also you’re in control of what you want to be watching at that time.
“There’s not one broadcast point of view, you can look at it through any angle of the stadium.
“That’s the sky – the limit.”
While Man City is looking to be ahead of the curve in the football world by being the first club to enter the metaverse, there is a growing shift more widely towards having a virtual presence.
Earlier this week, JPMorgan became the first bank to enter the metaverse, launching a virtual lounge in Decentraland.
Meanwhile, Playboy magazine has announced it too is looking at how it can maximise the potential of the metaverse, and is planning to build a virtual Playboy Mansion.
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