The St. Louis Blues are skating beyond the ice and into the metaverse.
The NHL franchise on Thursday unveiled Blues Experiential Reality, a “metaverse retail shopping experience.” The new e-commerce platform marks the Blues’ first foray in the metaverse, the term used to describe digital technologies that use virtual and augmented reality to make the internet more experiential and lifelike.
The Blues’ newly launched Blues Experiential Reality retail shop, which can be accessed online or through a mobile device, includes a 3D version of the team’s locker room at Enterprise Center. Fans can navigate through the locker room and purchase Blues merchandise that is on display there and for sale.
As the concept of the metaverse has become more prevalent, Blues Vice President of Innovation and Digital Strategy Matt Gardner said the team has considered how it might adopt such technology.
“There’s been ongoing conversations about what the metaverse is going to look like and where exactly the Blues will fit into the much larger spectrum of where things can go,” he said.
In creating its new metaverse retail shop, the Blues teamed up with Rank + Rally and DBK Studio, subsidiaries of its hospitality partner, Chicago-based Levy, and Vancouver, Canada-based startup Mantis XR. Gardner said he was introduced a few weeks ago to Mantis XR, which develops 3D e-commerce technology for the sports industry and retailers, through St. Louis-based venture capital firm Stadia Ventures. Mantis XR was a cohort company in Stadia’s spring 2020 startup accelerator program.
“Our team at Mantis XR has really enjoyed working with them to deliver Blues Experiential Retail, a first-of-its-kind, dynamic, social-commerce driven 3D metaverse experience without the need for downloads, wearables or 360 cameras. This is just the first phase of our partnership, and we have more in store,” said Kahlil Ashanti, founder and CEO of Mantis XR.
The Blues said expansion of its new metaverse platform could involve adding new products for sale to its virtual retail shop, curating exclusive content and developing new experiences for fans on the platform.
“We’re excited to learn through this initial engagement how our fans use it and then from there start figuring out what our next steps are and the things we want to do under this Blues experiential reality umbrella and where we take it from there,” Gardner said.
