Sports betting and gaming giant, Entain, is venturing into the metaverse domain with a $133 million investment in a center to build immersive experiences for its customers. The owner of the Ladbrokes and bwin betting businesses is planning to establish a ‘global innovation hub’ called Ennovate to develop sports and entertainment products.

Through this investment, the company will back startups and create applications based on non-fungible tokens (NFTs), virtual reality, and augmented reality.

“We want to lead the way with new, exciting products and experiences for customers and use our cutting-edge technology to pioneer innovations in sport, gaming, and interactive entertainment for the metaverse,” said the company’s CEO, Jette Nygaard-Andersen.

The popularity of the metaverse has massively gone up since Facebook rebranded itself to Meta last year. Moreover, gaming is one of the premier and rapidly-growing use cases within the metaverse.

Entain will develop and test its metaverse projects at Ennovate’s lab in London that will open in spring this year. The company has also collaborated with Verizon, BT, and Theta Labs for its projects.

“We’re developing new interactive entertainment experiences, with more gaming and social features, because it’s increasingly clear this is what people want,” said Dom Grounsell, Deputy Director of Digital at Entain.

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