Meta-First: Italian Serie A game becomes first match broadcast in the Metaverse

Meta-First: Italian Serie A game becomes the first match broadcast in the Metaverse.

The executive director of the league, Luigi De Siervo, stated that the objective of this initiative is “to be as close as possible” to football fans.

AN Italian Serie A game over the weekend became the first football match broadcast in the Metaverse. The executive director of the league, Luigi De Siervo, stated that the objective of this initiative is “to be as close as possible” to football fans.

Serie A’s Milan vs Fiorentina, which was played on Sunday, May 1, became the first football match to be broadcast in the so-called metaverse, a new network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.

The match, which was won 1-0 by the Milan giants, was aimed exclusively at the Middle East and North Africa.

Reacting to the project, Serie A’s chief executive, Italian Luigi De Siervo, said on Monday, May 2, that the aim was “to be as close as possible to our users”.

“Young people spend time in the metaverse. We try to be the first football league to interpret the concept of innovation. It’s like watching a match with other people, in a shared immersion of the football experience. So, does football lose its humanity? No, they are two connected phenomena, nobody wants to take poetry and humanity away from football,” De Siervo said on ‘Rai Radio 1’.

De Siervo said they are trying to reach out to the younger generation: “A modern league must put technology at the service of entertainment, in this case in a virtual stadium, in a function a bit closer to a video game. We are trying to ‘engage’ more with the younger generations, who are somewhat more fragmented and dispersed”.

The sports executive also highlighted the problem of piracy: “In Italy, we are leaders in piracy. If everyone watched the games on the ‘Pezzotto’ (piracy method available in Italy), I wouldn’t be here either, we wouldn’t have the resources to continue”.

Following the ‘meta-first, AC Milan’s Chief Revenue Officer Casper Stylsvig said: “We are proud to have been protagonists of the first official league match broadcast in the metaverse, thanks to the pioneering initiative of Serie A and the partners involved.

“It is an achievement that we as a club will be proud of as it is perfectly in line with the innovative spirit of Milan, committed to an important modernisation and digitalisation process that has seen the club achieve important results, and has always been attentive to exploit the trends of the digital world to engage the more than 500 million AC Milan fans around the world.”

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