🔊 Soccer Star Launches Metaverse Masterclass

Welcome to The Hype Report where we deliver the latest news, stories, and insights at the intersection of sports, artificial intelligence, and web3.

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Here's What You Need To Know This Week 📝

• Manchester City Captain Launches Metaverse Masterclass

• Two Major Metaverse Companies Are Teaming Up

• LSU's Angel Reese Inks NIL deal With Caktus AI

• Quick Hype + What Else To Read + AI Tool Of The Week

Let's Dive Into It 🤿

Manchester City Captain Launches Metaverse Masterclass ⚽

Global crypto exchange, OKX is going back-to-back like the Warriors in 2018.

After announcing the first athlete in their ‘OKX Collective’ metaverse experience just a week or so ago, OKX revealed Manchester City captain Ilkay Gündoğan as the latest athlete that'll be featured in the series with his own experience called ‘Make Your Play’.

The Manchester City captain becomes the second player to be featured in the series, behind teammate Rúben Días who's in the ‘Train Like Días’ experience that allows fans to gain insight into his training routine.

Gündoğan’s ‘Make Your Play’ follows a similar idea as Días.

He'll be able to invite fans into the digital world to learn the tactical skills needed to win in big-game situations.

Gündoğan stated the following about the opportunity:

“The beauty of our game is in the tactics. As someone who loves coaching and highlighting the tactical skills that are needed to win, it is hugely exciting to be able to share what I know in an arena like the OKX metaverse.”

The latest edition to the OKX Collective metaverse serves as a part of a multi-year deal between Manchester City and the crypto exchange which was signed last year.

OKX became Manchester City’s training kit sponsor last summer and launched the OKX Collective metaverse alongside athletes like Ilkay Gündoğan, Rúben Días, Jack Grealish, and Alex Greenwood.

The latter two are expected to feature in additional metaverse series' coming soon.

OKX began its foray into the metaverse by acquiring land in the Everdome digital world, which aims to create a fully immersive and interactive environment that allows users to engage with brands on a whole new level.

Haider Rafique, Global Chief Marketing Officer at OKX, had this to say about Illkay:

“İlkay is an incredible football mind, and this chance to benefit from his expert knowledge in an interactive virtual environment provides a glimpse into how Web3 stands to overhaul the ways we connect and interact in the future.”

You can try out İkay's new experience here:

Metaverse Companies LandVault and Super League Announce Strategic Partnership 🤝

Metaverse moves are still being made.

LandVault, which is a metaverse-building business, is teaming up with Super League, a leading publisher of immersive experiences, to build metaverse play sites in the Middle East.

More specifically, sites that are in the Gulf Cooperation Council area, which includes countries such as:

• Bahrain

• Kuwait

• Oman

• Qatar

• Saudi Arabia

• United Arab Emirates

The prime reason behind their joining forces is to make it easier for brands, sports teams, entertainment companies, and government bodies to join the metaverse.

LandVault, which considers themselves the "Wordpress for metaverses," has already built over 200 metaverse projects for some of the world’s largest brands, including:

• Mastercard

• L’Oreal

• Standard Chartered

The company expanded to Dubai earlier this year and is heavily investing in the GCC region, already building digital twins for real estate companies, amongst other projects.

Globally, Super League has designed and launched initiatives for brands, including:

• Samsung

• Mattel

• Nickelodeon

• MTV

• Universal Pictures

• Sony Pictures

• Chevrolet

LandVault and Super League both offer best-in-class analytics solutions across various web2 to web3 metaverse platforms, making sure brands can measure and evaluate the success of their initiatives over time.

LSU's Angel Reese Inks NIL Deal With Caktus AI 🌵

LSU Forward Angel Reece has no intentions of pumping the breaks on anything, anytime soon.

The recent NCAA Champion just partnered with AI company Caktus AI, the first-ever educational artificial intelligence tool that allows students to automate all of their school work.

She posted a video highlighting the partnership on Twitter and Instagram.

Reese started the video with the following statement about women's sports and female athletes:“We’re in a new era where women are cultural drivers, builders, and power players. Our actions now will empower the next generation. We control this revolution and our reclaiming our place in the $16 billion industry we helped build. Progress is contagious, our naysayers have no choice but to accept this new path. The days of underexposure, underinvestment, and underrepresentation are over. We push boundaries and the world’s taking notice. This is only the beginning.”

She is the latest LSU student-athlete to partner with the AI company.

Star gymnast Olivia Dunne partnered with them earlier this year and the deal flashed a warning from LSU about plagiarism.

The university put out this statement about the company back in March:

"At LSU, our professors and students are empowered to use technology for learning and pursuing the highest standards of academic integrity. However, using AI to produce work that a student then represents as one's own could result in a charge of academic misconduct, as outlined in the Code of Student Conduct."

LSU’s code of conduct for students does not specifically outline the use of artificial intelligence but does qualify plagiarism as academic misconduct.

It's clear that this AI tool might blur some lines between what is and what isn't plagiarism, but that hasn't stopped universities from allowing athletes to sign these deals and get these checks.

TikTok stars and former University of Miami hoopers Haley and Hanna Cavinder have also teamed up with the company.

Quick Hype 🎯

Sports And Cryptocurrency: Is It Truly A Win-Win For Both Industries? With the face of financial solutions changing and cryptocurrency fast overtaking fiat currencies, it leaves us wondering how the sports industry has been affected.

How Cryptocurrency is Revolutionizing Sports Betting: Sports betting crypto is gaining popularity almost everywhere in the world because it gives players more control over the markets.

How Nike's .SWOOSH Platform is Aiming to Switch Up the Sneaker Industry. With its first-ever virtual sneaker collection just gone live, Nike’s Ron Faris explains how .SWOOSH will use Web3 co-creation to define the future of performance footwear.

Karate Combat closes $18M to build Web3, mixed reality live sports.

Are NBA Top Shot Moments Securities? The Importance of How NFTs Are Managed.

What Else To Read 📖

AI is changing the world, but is it all for the better?

In my latest Boardroom article, I dive into why artificial intelligence built within facial recognition can have a negative impact on the sports industry.

Especially within stadiums and arenas.

AI Tool Of The Week 🛠️

So we all know that robots are coming and will either take all our jobs or kill us and take over the world...

Jokes aside... I've been diving into different AI tools and thought it'd be cool to share some of the stuff I'm learning and explore different ways they can interweave with sports.

With the NBA playoffs in mind, I created this image of Sixers star center Joel Embiid as a Vincent Van Gogh painted impression using the AI tool: https://stablediffusionweb.com

The craziest part is it only took 8 seconds 🤯

Talk to you again next week.

Thanks for taking the time!

Malcolm

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not financial or business advice in any capacity. The information shared is my thoughts & opinions and does not represent the opinions of any other person, business, entity, or sponsor.

The contents of this newsletter also should not be used in any public or private domain without the author's express permission. The contents of this newsletter should not be used for any commercial activity, for example, research report, consultancy activity, or paywalled article, without the author's express permission.