🏀 Metaproof Sports

This is Sophia from 🏀 Metaproof Sports, the weekly newsletter where we keep you informed on how the metaverse and web3 are changing the sports industry.

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💌 A quick thanks to our friends…

This edition is sponsored by Matchday. Collect, trade and play in. Enjoy games built for football’s 5 billion fans.

Matchday features tens of thousands of well-loved footballers, in partnership with the global player union FIFPRO. Players, who 100% own the player cards they collect, can take their squad in 2023 and compete against others in the casual football game. The Matchday Marketplace is now live to get you started in building your dream squad and dive deep into Matchday games next year. Check them out today! 

📲 By the numbers

• Recent studies indicate that the global market for artificial intelligence in sports was valued at $1.B in 2021 and is expected to reach $19.9B by 2030. (Source)

• In 2022, around 23% of Gen Z’s were “extremely interested” in exploring holistic, immersive virtual worlds. (Source)

📫 News & trends

⏰ Hublot plays creative card as timekeeper of the metaverse

Luxury watchmaker Hublot has partnered with US-based stadium architects MEIS and metaverse builders Spatial to create the 90,000-spectator Hublot Loves Football Metaverse Stadium, dubbed a “spectacular one-kilometer-long venue showcases Hublot’s love for football, boundless innovation and community.” The move marks Hublot’s entrance in the metaverse via a hybrid sports, art, and digital events space inspired by the design of Hublot’s connected Big Bang e watch.

Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe calls the Hublot Loves Football Metaverse Stadium “a natural progression” for the brand in its legacy as a “trusted timekeeper of world football,” allowing the watchmaker to make its mark in metaverse history “when the intersection of luxury, fashion, sport and virtual worlds is beginning to take off.”

The Hublot stadium can be accessed by visitors for free from their phone, desktop, or Oculus headset.

⚽ Football club Manchester City is coming to the metaverse

World-renowned football club Manchester City is gearing up to enter the metaverse, in partnership with no less than Sony. This offers fans of the English soccer club to enter a virtual version of the team’s stadium and take part in new digital experiences. While exact details of the partnership between the current Premier League champions and Sony is still in development, it is touted as unprecedented in the soccer world. In the meantime, the experience consists of a virtual visit to the Etihad Stadium, with the promise of more to come. The projection: Fans will be able to teleport into this virtual stadium, each under the guise of their own avatar, while the players’ avatars are able to move around on the field, each one equipped with sensors to reproduce their way of moving and playing with the ball.

🎾 Roblox to host Australian Open metaverse experience

Tennis Australia has partnered with Roblox to launch AO Adventure, a new interactive metaverse game for the Australian Open Grand Slam championship. The contract involves Roblox housing a digital recreation of Melbourne Park and users competing in virtual tennis-themed games to win prizes. Australian Open’s airline partner Emirates also has a plugin with the Roblox experience, and AO Adventure will feature a digital shop where users can buy digital collectibles for their avatars. This deal marks Tennis Australia’s latest metaverse venture, following its initiative with Decentraland for the AO ArtBall NFTs for last year’s Australian Open - a partnership that will remain active for this year’s tournament. Coming up soon: Tennis Australia will look to leverage Roblox’s network of over 200 million monthly active users to reach new fans, particularly younger audiences.

🐎 Dubai hosts world’s first-ever metaverse horse racing event

Dubai has hosted the first metaverse horse racing event in the UAE via the Dubai Verse Cup (DVCC) play-to-earn (P2E) metaverse-based horse racing platform, created in partnership with the Dubai Racing Club (DRC). The metaverse platform enables users to use smartphones and AR/VR devices to experience the real-world tension of horse racing and breeding. With the public beta version already rolled out, the platform enables users to gain rewards in the form of $DVCC tokens, based on their racing and breeding performance. Players can exchange tokens into horses, perks, skins, and avatars, fostering a “thriving marketplace and competition space at the heart of Meydan Racecourse.” The game’s developing company DVCC aims to create an open platform that welcomes third-party developers and users for ultimately enhancing user experience.

🔢 ESPN first sports broadcaster to use Unreal Engine for real-time graphics

ESPN has become the first sports broadcaster to use an end-to-end live graphics tool from video game engine developer Epic Games, perhaps best-known for its game Fortnite while its Unreal Engine is widely used across the gaming industry. The most recent version, Unreal Engine 5, was launched in May 2020 and can import high-resolution images to create more realistic digital worlds. Part of Unreal Engine 5 is a tool called Project Avalanche, which allows broadcasters to design and deploy an entire graphics package in a single environment. On-screen graphics are a crucial component of any sports broadcast, traditionally supplied by highly specialized vendors and dedicated technology. Engine developers like Epic Games - along with the likes of Unity, a company providing its “volumetric 3D” platform - are keen to adapt their technology for the digital and broadcast sectors as they embrace virtual reality, the metaverse, and more immersive production.

🥊 Roy Jones Jr. to battle IFBB PRO bodybuilder in metaverse fight

Former pound-for-pound king Roy Jones Jr. returns to action in combat sports this spring by going against Robert Wilmote a.k.a. NDO CHAMP in what promoters dub as the first-ever live combat sport in the metaverse. Wilmote is a well-known IFBB PRO bodybuilder, motivational speaker, actor, and fitness trainer. Boxing legend Mike Tyson and Jones broke pay per view records in their 2020 exhibition boxing match, selling 1.5 million PPVs - garnering more than Floyd Mayweather’s Showtime effort against a YouTuber. Details of the fight that will take place at The Galaxy Arena will be announced at the press conference.

🏏 Myco hunts sports rights after 1,200% cricket stream viewing spike

London- and Dubai-based platform Myco claims it experienced a 1,200% uptick in new users after becoming the first web3 video platform to stream a live sports event. The company acquired rights to the India versus Bangladesh bilateral cricket series for the MENA region, leading to a huge boom in users compared with the previous 30 days as expatriates flocked to watch the sport in December 2022. Myco, which allows viewers to earn tokens as they watch and thus access more content, experienced a 431% spike in views and 344% increase in engaged sessions. It is now actively looking to secure more live sports and events - both in MENA and elsewhere - for its global service, keen for this event to be “the first to many more sports events that will be streamed live on [its] platform.”

🤝 FTX collapse triggers end of lucrative crypto-sports partnerships

Many lucrative cryptocurrency deals in sports sponsorships took a significant downturn in 2022 due to price drops and market crashes - yet it’s the FTX scandal that appears to be the death knell of such partnerships. GlobalData’s report “Sports Trends and Predictions 2023 – Thematic Intelligence” underscored that cryptocurrency’s inherent instability, adding to the lack of meaningful regulation and legislation, was always likely to be a negative factor in the industry’s future success in sports sponsorship. Sports teams, according to the data and analytics firm, will now look to partner with technology brands instead. Formerly jumping at the chance to sign deals worth millions of dollars, these teams are now forced to rethink their sponsorship strategies in the fallout of crypto-related deals’ collapse.

🏆 FISU providing NFT trophies to athletes in addition to medals at Lake Placid 2023

Athletes have received NFT digital trophies at the Lake Placid 2023 International University Sports Federation (FISU) Winter World University Games following a collaboration with sports management and monetization software company Leverade. Apart from handing out physical medals, FISU is using blockchain technology to award competitors with digital trophies as it claims to be "positioning itself as one of the world's most innovative entities." The official medals in NFT format are minted by the federation, with a certificate of authenticity and ownership recorded in the blockchain forever, noted a FISU statement. With digital trophies considered a great asset and attraction to capture the public's attention, there’s more to come for athletes earning the digital medals: They will obtain an exclusive and unique digital certification of their sporting achievement, which they can carry anywhere via mobile phone, with a virtual trophy room available on the metaverse.

🔥 Sports trends to watch in 2023

For fans who follow the action beyond the stadium’s physical confines, there is a much vaunted discussion around all things metaverse – and at this point much of the hype is centered around digital venues and spaces for fan communities to convene and watch live game broadcasts. In 2022, around 23% of Gen Z’s were “extremely interested” in exploring holistic, immersive virtual worlds, and findings like this hold major implications for various stakeholders in sports, particularly rights holders, sponsors, and broadcasters. 2023 will be a pivotal year for some of these big ideas around the sports metaverse to become more tangible and less conceptual. If 2022 was a year of fragmentation, turbulence, and opportunity in the sector, 2023 is likely to continue in the same vein albeit at an even greater velocity, with novelty formats commanding fan attention and immersive environments lending more experiences.

👟 2022 recap: New Balance uses NFTs to authenticate products

Sports apparel brand New Balance has chosen to enter the metaverse, with the discovery that it has filed three trademark applications with the intent to sell virtual shoes, clothing, and sports equipment. The announcement in 2022 came not long after Nike, Adidas, and Puma decided to join the metaverse. New Balance, whose brand demographics are among older people, has seemed to capture younger customers outside of the United States, thus positioning this strategy as a way to capture younger Americans, who are also interested in NFTs and the metaverse.

🥎 Artball’s revolutionary approach to sports entertainment and experience expands beyond tennis

Technology company NFT Technologies has announced that its studio’s ArtBall concept, first seen in the AO Art Ball, is expanding into new sports from its beginnings in tennis. ArtBall uses digital assets to deliver new ways for fans to participate and experience their favorite sports. For the AO Metaverse, it uses line-calling technology that tracks the ball’s trajectory using multiple computer-linked cameras situated around the court - tech used broadly across athletics, football, cricket, rugby, and volleyball. It is poised to deploy other ball-tracking technologies such as goal-line, commonly used for football, and ball-tracking for golf into the ArtBall experience. ArtBall also focuses on art through showcasing a diverse range of art styles, including balls created from scratch by artists, community submissions from fans and artists around the world, generative art created using algorithms, and collaborative art created through partnerships with other organizations and brands, including Marriott International, Penfolds, The Metakey, and others.

💯 Better Fan unveils web3-based sports-betting platform

The sports betting market’s growth entails the need for a safe, sustainable, legal revenue model. Better Fan believes the answer is in developing a sports-betting platform that combines web3-based infrastructure and the P2E concept, and where in-game taxes and fees are collected in a common pool to provide a much fairer means of distribution. Promoted as the world’s first web3-based gamified betting platform, Better Fan, "gamifies" the sports-betting ecosystem, reducing gamers’ potential losses by letting them place bets without using fiat currencies or crypto. It distinguishes itself from others in that on web2-based platforms, people use real money to place their bet; if they lose, their entire stake will be lost as well. Since Better Fan users don't stake anything of value, they can only lose their daily bets, which are renewed every 24 hours. Each user's NFT-based Fan cards determine bet amounts and daily betting limits, and users can upgrade these NFTs and increase their Card Rates. If bets are successful, users are rewarded with Better Fan’s Better Than Bet (BTB) utility tokens, to be used for in-game activities (users can exchange them for USDT directly in-game).

🆓 Free course: NFTs and the future of digital collectibles

With the rise of digital ownership and Web3, NFTs have become the talk of the town. But how will they impact the sports industry? Metaverse Essentials: Building the Future, a free course, from Front Office Sports and Meta, breaks down the ever-evolving connection between sports and the metaverse. The five-lesson course includes Pushing Culture Forward with Digital Collectibles, where Meta’s Emerging Sports Industries Lead, Omar Wilson, is joined by digital collectible execs from Dibbs, Dapper Labs, OneFootball, HEIR, and New Game Labs to converse on how the blockchain and NFTs will reshape physical and digital collectibles experiences for creators, brands, and fans around the world. Register for the course today.

💸 Finance buzz

• Despite a challenging macroeconomic environment, sports technology companies secured US$7.3B in funding up to the end of October 31, 2022, according to SportTechX, while there were 734 deals reached in the sector in the first nine months of 2022, Drake Star Reports noted. (Source)

• Virtualness, a mobile-first platform designed to help creators, brands, and the sports, media and entertainment industry navigate web3, announced that former ESPN, Singtel, and Meta executive Joyee Biswas will join Virtualness as a founding team member, heading sports and media partnerships. (Source)

🗣️ Quote of the week

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All content on this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not aim to serve as or replace expert investment advice.

If you are a startup building in the metaverse / web3 ecosystem and are raising capital, please reach out to Sfermion. Sfermion is an investment firm focused on accelerating the emergence of the metaverse.

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