Briefly:

• Major League Baseball will host a celebrity All-Star Game in the Metaverse.
• The league will debut a virtual stadium for celebrity softball games this weekend.
• MLB said a metaverse-based stadium would give people who can’t attend a live game a chance to socialize.

Major League Baseball (MLB) has launched a virtual stadium for this weekend’s All-Star Game celebration. The league will host celebrity softball games in the Metaverse, allowing fans around the world to interact with live games.

However, according to the announcement, the virtual stadium will not offer anything close to a VR/AR experience, and users will only be able to interact with the live game via the website. Users can walk around the virtual stadium with their avatar and play several mini-games.

Front Office Sports reports that crowd sounds occur and change depending on the position of the digital avatar within the stadium.

“When you hear the crowd cheering, you know it’s not the canned stuff. It’s actually the other people there. We’re opening it up to audiences around the world in ways we’ve never been able to do before, and it’s very important for us to do experiments like this,” Gersh said. Said front office sports

The announcement follows Major League Baseball (MLB) Players’ partnership with Fan Token platform Sorare in May 2022, which included the launch of an NFT-based free-to-play game.

With today’s announcement, MLB enters a new segment of the emerging industry: Web3 and the Metaverse. MLB announced the launch in a Twitter post, stating that Celebrity Softball will allow viewers to join a spectator party during games. Attendees will also have the chance to win World Series tickets by taking on challenges.