Australian Open Partners Decentraland For Official Grand Slam In Metaverse

There is a sudden rise in sponsorship rates from cryptocurrency exchanges and protocol to sports teams and leagues, increasing moves into the Metaverse by several companies and operations.

For example, Decentraland struck a partnership deal with Tennis Australia for hosting the Australian Open (AO). This process will be recorded as the first official tennis grand plunge into the Metaverse.

The collaboration will enable virtual recreation of outstanding parts of Melbourne Park, such as the Rod Laver Arena and Grand Slam Park. This is expected to run throughout the AO tournament, a fortnight, starting from Monday.

The event’s content is expected through its emergence in the Metaverse for virtual visitors. These include AO radio, live footage broadcasting, and footage of tennis matches from archives of its 70s.

Moreover, there will be virtual meetings with prominent and famous players like Mark Philippoussis and others to be confirmed later.

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Furthermore, there will be footage behind the scenes from more than 300 cameras within Melbourne Park. The entire practice village and players’ arrival areas will be part of them.

Expectations From The Metaverse

Through Decentraland, Ridley Plummer, the Project Manager of Tennis Australia NFT and Metaverse, rendered his virtual welcome report.

He expressed his expectations that AO will be the most accessible and inclusive sports and entertainment event worldwide. Furthermore, he mentioned that the Metaverse launch is expected to tackle fans’ challenges of reaching Melbourne.

With some traveling restrictions, primarily because of the COVID-19 pandemic, most fans may not get real-life access to the event in Melbourne. However, going by the challenges during the 2021 AO, there were lockdown restrictions and a remarkably low turn-out of on-site viewers for the first time in history.

Plummer revealed that the agreement is not just a one-off thing despite the early start-off of the partnership deal to circumvent the pandemic. He mentioned that their collaboration with Decentraland is on a long-term basis. He explained that since the Metaverse has come to stay, their company utilizes the opportunity for expansion through innovation.

Moreover, Plummer confessed to Tennis Australia’s exploration for a non-seasonal property within the Metaverse. He said their operations go beyond creating tennis events to bringing more entertainment. So, the organization will map out their plans if their activities could be for 12 months or a few months of the year.

In another development, the AO has publicized its commitment to non-fungible tokens on January 17. It mentioned its plans of releasing 6 NFT collections from its partnership with Sweet, an NFT platform. The release will celebrate the AO’s past five decades of operation.

According to the announcement, there will be an intermittent release of the collections that will coincide with the tournament from January 17 to 27.

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In this speech, the CEO of Sweet, Tom Mizzone, stated that the NFT release depicts a new accessible level that the fans can use to peek at their favorite idols.

Featured image from Pixabay, chart from TradingView.com