On Sunday, the top-flight of Italian football ‘Serie A’ became the first live broadcasters of a football match in the metaverse. To align with the landmark occasion, the game in question was a heavy-weight clash between AC Milan and Fiorentina, which in the end saw the Milanese team come up out on top 1-0 to pull them to the summit of the league table.
⚠️ SPOILER ALERT ????
Sneaky peek ???? of the #metaverse experience designed for all ⚽️ fans in the MENA region…
A passionate project with @ConsenSys and @SerieA_AR https://t.co/WtgsiPK41r
— The Nemesis (@TheNemesis_io) April 30, 2022
A collaboration between multi-billion dollar blockchain technology company ‘ConsenSys’ and gaming platform ‘The Nemesis’ produced the first-of-its-kind offering, with the ‘Serie A Room’ (which was essentially a virtual sports bar) being situated in The Nemesis metaverse. Here, football fans exclusively from the MENA region (Africa and the Middle East) were able to gain access through minting an NFT ticket, where they would then be able to watch the game and interact with one another as if they were in a physical context. The room, which is accustomed to hosting live metaverse events such as parties, concerts, and niche challenges, was also able to provide its virtual attendees with real-time stats of the game.
According to the league’s CEO Luigi De Siervo, Serie A chose to be the first adopters of such broadcast experience because it believes that “the frontier of technological innovation is extremely important for a modern league such as Serie A”. Its decision for it to be a MENA-exclusive event was a strategic ploy to cater to the dominant presence and particular receptivity to new developments in which the Generation Z population has in the MENA region.
