In General XR News
April 28, 2023 – OKX, a Web3 technology company, crypto exchange and the Training Kit Partner of Manchester City Football Club (MCFC), has this week kicked off a new interactive metaverse avatar campaign with the Club. The new experience at playforthecity.com gives fans the opportunity to personalize their own digital avatars in Manchester City training kits and pre-match warm-up apparel with OKX branding.
To mark the kick-off, a hero video featuring top Manchester City players as giant avatars exploring Manchester as fans make their way to the stadium debuted in a multi-channel campaign during Manchester City’s home clash with fellow Premier League title contenders Arsenal. The video announced the new experience and encouraged fans to “Play for the City” and get their own personalized digital avatars in the Manchester City x OKX kit.
Powered by Ready Player Me’s avatar creation platform, Playforthecity.com allows fans to create their own bespoke avatars in seconds, giving them the ability to use their new avatars across 4,000 metaverse games and apps that Ready Player Me is compatible with.
Haider Rafique, Global Chief Marketing Officer at OKX, said: “The metaverse experiences we’ve been developing with Manchester City represent a whole world of exciting new opportunities, and your avatar grants you access to these. This campaign is another example of how Manchester City and OKX are delivering on the promise of Web3 to enhance the fan experience and help people get closer to what OKX considers ‘a new way to internet’.”
Gavin Johnson, Media Director at City Football Group, commented: “We’re pleased to launch this exciting campaign with OKX and Yahoo today. Bringing together expertise from all three collaborators, we’re able to offer Manchester City fans across the world the ability to connect and engage with the club in a unique and interesting new way and we hope fans enjoy the experience on offer.”
The experience was created by Manchester City and OKX in collaboration with Yahoo. Working with the Ready Player Me platform to build the bespoke AR and avatar experience, Yahoo created the hero video and will distribute the content through digital Out of Home (DOOH) locations as well as video, display and native formats across mobile, tablet and TV screens to inspire Manchester City fans to try it for themselves.
Josh Partridge, Head of EMEA at Yahoo, stated: “We had a clear brief – to offer fans a fun, engaging and immersive experience that gives them new ways to interact with the team and players through digital touchpoints in the stadium, the city, and even the virtual world. Using Yahoo’s experience in producing premium quality digital content and distributing it at scale directly to the club’s target audience means we can help in forging deeper connections on digital platforms with their fans through new, interactive ways on match day and beyond.”
This is the latest Metaverse experience brought to fans by OKX and Manchester City following the launch of a training course with Rúben Dias and a tactical masterclass with İlkay Gündoğan in the OKX Collective metaverse. According to OKX, May will see fans invited into the metaverse for exclusive experiences with footballers Jack Grealish and Alex Greenwood.
Image credit: OKX
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Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.