Creating Sports Experiences in the Metaverse at the Gateway to Web3: A Content Analysis on Digital Native and Legacy Sports Brands

The metaverse and digital sports are a match made in heaven. The metaverse represents an unprecedented opportunity for sports brands to innovate in how they create and deliver experiences to fans (Bilgihan, Leong, Okumus and Bai, 2024; Chohan and Schmidt-Devlin, 2023). By leveraging Web3 technologies such as blockchain, decentralisation, and immersive virtual platforms, sports experience creators are transforming their interactions with consumers (Raveh, 2023). These innovations allow fans to engage in virtual sports arenas, own non-fungible tokens (NFTs) tied to iconic moments, and participate in gamified play-to-earn (P2E) ecosystems.