Australian Open (AO) is ready to enter the metaverse for the second time.
However, unlike last year, the tennis tournament will be offered not only on Decentraland with “AO Metaverse,” but also on Roblox with “AO Adventure.”
The Decentraland-hosted metaverse space, designed by Web3 studio Run It Wild, lets guests explore a virtual replica of Melbourne Park.
The experience features tours of the precincts, the stadium Rod Laver Arena, and the option for visitors to create their own adventure through a variety of tennis content, including live vision from Melbourne Park.
AO’s Roblox-hosted metaverse space is similar to Decentraland’s, but avatars are be able to test their reflexes in a tennis mini-game and complete a towering obstacle course to collect in-game assets.
AO Metaverse — which will be available from January 16 to 29 — and AO Adventure complement AO’s ArtBall project, which uses NFTs to allow fans to engage and experience their favorite sports in a new, more immersive way.
The collection includes 6,776 NFTs from the AO22 collection and 2,454 NFTs from the AO23 collection, with each NFT including a 17cm x 17cm plot of each tennis court surface. When the winning shot from one of the 400+ AO matches lands on that plot, the NFT metadata is updated in real-time with match information.
Recently, AO also revealed a reward program for NFT holders, which includes access to a variety of tickets to tennis, live sports, and real-world and metaverse entertainment events. For example, each eligible AO ArtBall who achieves a Match Point on the AO23 court has a chance to win 2x tickets to the same match at AO24.
