With the aid of virtual reality experts at Sony, Manchester City has started construction of the world’s first football stadium within the metaverse.
Because of image analysis and skeletal-tracking technology created by Hawk-Eye, a subsidiary of the IT and entertainment corporation, the club’s stadium will become a significant hub of the City in a virtual reality environment.
City officials working on the project see a time when a virtual Etihad Stadium would be packed many times over, allowing supporters who will never visit Manchester to watch live games from the amenity of their own homes anywhere in the globe.
Sony has signed a three-year agreement with the Premier League’s digital pioneers. While the project is in the premature stages of development, teams of Sony experts have already visited Etihad to map it and digitally recreate it in virtual reality.
Manchester City providing global fans an immersive experience
Manchester City hopes that supporters would use all the advantages of having a virtual stadium. Although COVID regulations continue to limit certain travelers’ journey possibilities, the option to watch games in an immersive metaverse environment might be a welcome reprieve for those who have been longing to return to a gaming setting.
By constructing the virtual Etihad Stadium, the club breaks down roadblocks for fans who want to be a part of live or recorded games. Nuria Tarré, the chief marketing officer of City Football Group, told Inews on Friday. “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.”
Currently, the metaverse is accessible via a headset and explored with hand controllers. Developers working in the fields of football and virtual reality think that present technology will let a match be reprised in a digital version, similar to how the Fifa video game appears, but that in the future, spectators will be able to witness real games played in a virtual stadium.