The Australian Tennis Federation has entered into a partnership with the Decentraland platform. The Australian Open Grand Slam will be the first to be played in virtual reality.
The Australian Open kicks off today, January 17th. Sports venues located in Melbourne, including the Rod Laver Arena and Grand Slam Park, were modeled on the Decentraland platform. Users will also have access to broadcasts of tennis matches and Australian Open radio. More than 300 video cameras will broadcast the video, both from the tennis courts and beyond.
“We want the Australian Open to be the most accessible sports and entertainment event in the world. With all the challenges that tennis fans face getting to Melbourne, we’ve made our launch into the metaverse as fast as possible. This is an important step in providing true global access to our event,” said Australian Tennis Federation Project Manager Ridley Plummer.
He also stressed that the tennis federation plans to continue cooperation with Decentraland. The online presence on the platform will only expand. Most likely, it will be possible to visit less significant tennis events in the virtual space. Users will also have access to archival footage from previous Australian Open tournaments.
In addition, the Australian Open management released six collections of NFTs on the Sweet platform. Each collection covers 10 years of the tournament. Collection tokens will be issued during the tournament – from January 17 to January 27. On January 12, 6,776 “Art Ball” collection tokens were released on the OpenSea platform, which are images and videos created by the algorithm.
