Australian Open: First Grand Slam In The Metaverse

Australian Open, one of the biggest sports showdowns is set to enter the Metaverse. This year 2022, the tennis tournament will be hosted virtually on Decentraland. Also, an NFT collection linked to data from Australian Open matches have been deployed.

Australian Open 2022 on Decentraland

As the race to the Metaverse continues to heat up, the Australian Open makes a mega move by partnering with Decentraland. This is to give tennis fans an uninterrupted access to the sports event in 2022. Meanwhile, this move was fast-tracked bearing in mind, the challenges posed by the increasing Covid-19 issues in Melbourne.

In essence, fans all over the world will be able to attend the Australian Open tournament virtually. With the help of Decentraland, you will be able to enter the main stadium, explore the precincts, watch tennis matches, view historic AO contents, with tennis players and other tennis fans.

Furthermore, the Australian Open Decentraland event will go live at 10:00 AEDT on 17 January 2022 / 18:00 ET 16 January 2022. You can access the games at “events.decentraland.org” only for the duration of the tournament.

Speaking of Decentraland, it is an open-source 3D virtual reality platform. It is the first fully decentralized world and it is controlled by the Decentraland DAO.

Australian Open Introduces First-Ever NFTs

In adding more colour to their Metaverse project, the body introduces its novel digital collection named AO Art Ball NFTs. Notably, the collection comprises of 6,776 unique pieces of generative art. Interestingly, these NFTs will be linked to the real-time court and/or live match data from AO 2022.

Asides from giving fans the opportunity to own a piece of AO 2022, the Art Ball Non-Fungible Tokens is said to have utilities such as limited-edition wearables, AO merchandise while other use cases will come in the future.

According to the update, the AO Art Ball Collection contains 160 NFTs from the AO Artist Series. Likewise, inside the collection are 22 AO Legend designs handcrafted from historical AO artwork.

Worth noting is that, the AO Art Ball Collection was designed by RunItWild, a blockchain studio and metaverse specialists alongside Web3 strategists, Rarer Things.

Special Highlight On The AO Art Ball Collection

Reportedly, the AO Art Balls public sale and minting will kick-start at 10:00 AEDT on 13 January 2022 / 18:00 ET 12 January 2022 and can be accessed at AOartballs.io.