OKX, a leading Web3 company and cryptocurrency exchange, has announced that it has teamed up with professional football players Jack Grealish, Rafael Diaz, Ikay Gundogan and Alex Greenwood from Manchester City Football Club to create the OKX Collective. According to a press release by the company, the Collective will offer users access to an immersive experience in a metaverse specifically designed for fans.
The Collective will provide fans with a metaverse experience in which they may interact with Web3 and its features, as well as enjoy exclusive material and rewards from their favourite Manchester City stars. In addition, the fans will get to participate in fun-filled activities tailored according to the interests and strengths of the participating football stars.
Haider Rafique, Chief Marketing Officer at OKX, said, “Introducing elite footballers to our newly established metaverse is about sharing the boundless possibilities of Web3 and inviting fans to experience it first-hand.”
OKX has an ongoing partnership with the defending English Premier League champions that has the company branding the club’s training kits and being its official crypto partner. The metaverse is becoming increasingly important as major companies shift their attention to the Web3 domain.
The sports and entertainment industries are certainly among the most promising segments in the metaverse ecosystem. With that in mind, OKX’s choice to incorporate Manchester City’s players into its fledging metaverse appears to be a calculated move to capitalize on the club’s broad international fanbase.
Many companies are still taking a cautious approach to the metaverse, because it is a relatively unchartered territory. In addition, it is a capital-intensive industry that has seen the likes of Microsoft and Meta invest billions of dollars with little to show for it. In fact, it is mostly a loss-making industry as of now.
In a recent report, Meta incurred losses amounting to $13.7 billion on its Reality Labs metaverse project in 2022. Similarly, Microsoft has stated that it will be dismantling its Virtual Reality (VR) division, AltspaceVR. The move will result in the loss of as many as 10,000 workers. Instead, the company has shifted gears and decided to partner with ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI, in what could save it billions.
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