By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 5th, 2024
Manchester City has signed a three-year partnership agreement with Sony Group to improve players-fans interaction and to get its Etihad stadium to the metaverse.
The metaverse economy has in the past couple of years recorded incredible numbers with a lot of partnerships coming up in recent times. According to reports, the metaverse economy recorded over $20 billion in retail sales in 2020. This is expected to increase as many multinational companies have announced their intentions to set up stores in the virtual reality world. According to recent development, the defending champions of the ongoing English premier league, Manchester City has signed a three-year partnership agreement with Sony Group Corporation (TYO: 6758) to improve players-fans interaction and to get its Etihad stadium to the metaverse.
It is reported that Manchester City envisions the filling of its virtual stadium to full capacity and also, the moments where fans would interact with players and purchase the club’s products in the metaverse.
This partnership with Sony allows Manchester City to develop exciting projects. “This will create an immersive digital experience like never before in football,” said Nuria Tarre, City football group chief marketing and fan engagement officer. “We are looking forward to launching this partnership and bringing together Sony’s industry-leading technology with Manchester City’s global network of supporters,” he added.
He further explained that its move into the metaverse will help to recreate the game and assist fans to go live and be part of the action in different ways through different angles. He believes that fans can fill the stadium as much as they want as this is completely virtual and has no limits.
According to him, this is very interesting as fans are in total control of what they will be watching at that time. The partnership means Manchester City will take advantage of the groundbreaking technology and the global fan-base of Sony to come out with exciting digital content.
Toshimoto Mitomo, Officer in Charge of Intellectual Property and Incubation Platform at Sony Group Corporation explained that Sony will take a considerable step to improve the value of content and its engagement with fans across the globe.
Experts believe that moving football into the metaverse is not far off as they could replicate a match in the digital version. They are working to ensure that fans watch real games in virtual stadiums in the future. As it stands, the metaverse is accessed through the headset and navigated through hand controllers.
Sony has recently been very active in areas that have to do with the metaverse. In April last year, the Japanese conglomerate Sony assisted Epic Games with $200 million in a funding round, and in July pumped $250 million in Epic. This was to help accelerate their work around the connected social experiences and assist the vision of epic and metaverse.