“For brands it’s becoming increasingly important to create experiences that carry impact beyond the festival fields. Through timely planning, great ambition and integrated innovation, there is every opportunity for a brand to take center stage.” — Saatchi Sport & Entertainment’s business director Nicola Murray
Michael and Emily Eavis, organizers of Glastonbury 2022 — the UK’s largest music festival — sold 130,000 tickets in 20 minutes. Tomorrowland sold a quite preposterous 600,000 tickets in 10 minutes for the 2022 festival. In 2016, Lollapalooza sold every four-day-pass by lunchtime. This year, it took 15 minutes.
Coachella? Sold out. Rock in Rio? Sold Out. Summerfest? Sold out. Parklife? Sold out. BottleRock — a Californian festival for people who don’t like tents — sold 90 ‘suites’ for $100,000 each. In two minutes. Demand for large musical festivals is outstripping supply so effortlessly, even with 5G and the luck of the Irish, chances are you’ll still miss out when tickets go on sale.
Which is why concerts and festivals are the first IRL (in real life) event we know can benefit from a metaverse twin. Some already are.
“The sounds (and fashion!) of the Coachella music and arts festival come to Fortnite. From now ’til May 16, turn to Icon Radio in your Joyride vehicle for a line-up of artists featured in Coachella 2022!” — Fortnite
In 2022, Coachella experimented with virtual additions, creating an app to offer visitors AR and VR mapping, Instagram filters and NFTs. But that was for visitors to the festival. For those who couldn’t be in the Colorado Desert, Coachella partnered with Fortnite to create a metaverse event. Players could customize avatars and listen to music from the Coachella.
Elsewhere on the virtual festival circuit, Decentral Games partnered with legendary Ibiza super-club Amnesia to bring clubbing to the metaverse. Some of the world’s biggest DJs — Paul Van Dyk, Benny Benassi, Luciano, Anfisa Letyago, Bushwacka — brought the beats.
Staying on the dancefloor, last year centralized gaming giant Roblox partnered with event promoter Insomniac. They wanted to create a metaverse twin of the world’s largest dance music festival, Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC). And they did.
“As more than 500,000 attendees gather Under the Electric Sky in-person at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend, fans can join the festival in the metaverse.”- Roblox
From entertainment to corporate event metaverse twins
Festivals can make larger returns on their investment if they host a metaverse twin. They can also get more exposure and interest in their ‘product’, offer unique experiences for existing fans and introduce a new generation of festival-goers to the brand (yes, festivals are brands).
But what about conferences, exhibitions, workshops and product launches? Can corporate events benefit from metaverse twins in the same way entertainment can? The answer is a profitable yes.
“61% of medical conference attendees would be uncomfortable traveling to the US to attend a medical conference in the first quarter of 2021. A further 20 percent are “unsure.”
Conferences
For conference organizers, metaverse twins solve a trilemma of challenges: budget, venue and accessibility.
Tech, medicine, poetry or ping pong. No matter the subject, by having a metaverse twin, conference organizers can lower costs by choosing smaller venues (and maximizing the space there).
By encouraging visitors to head for the virtual entrances, conference organizers can also increase accessibility by welcoming guests from all over the world.
Exhibitions
Exhibitions are time consuming and expensive. Visitors often spend a week or more on the road, stay in expensive hotels and have transport costs and a week of recovery to worry about. Metaverse twin events remove this challenge for event organizers by giving busy visitors the opportunity to get together and experience the exhibition with a click of a button, from anywhere in the world.
Workshops and seminars
Metaverse twins make training larger numbers of people easier. Whether it is product training, employee training or certification, virtual spaces can be quickly adapted to the dynamic needs of learning goals. Whole processes can be replicated in a virtual environment, making experimentation accessible and cheaper and lowering risk when training is dangerous.
Teachers and speakers can connect from anywhere in the world, training documents shared and examined in immersive online environments.
And, as always, there is cost-cutting. Companies can save hundreds of working hours lost through travel.
Product launches
Product launches increase sales, improve brand recognition and connect a brand more intimately with fans. Not easy to do in a warehouse. E3 and Apple are outliers. Don’t let the exceptions to the rule be your rule.
Brands launching a product can benefit from a metaverse twin because they can connect with more people.
Potential customers won’t travel long distances to see your latest car, headphones, tennis racket, fishing rod or fiber optic cable, but they will go to the metaverse to have a look.
Film premiers
Most movie premiers are in Paris, London and New York. It’s hard to get tickets. Nobody knows they are happening. Having sister events in the metaverse gives the general public a chance to meet the stars and give your movie the audience to disrupt the red carpet.
In a competitive industry where movies have a very small window of opportunity to create momentum, metaverse event twins can make a difference.
Metaverse Twin Events Final Thoughts
The events covered here all really benefit from metaverse twin events for the same reasons. What, at RLTY, we call the four pillars of metaverse events:
- Scalable — you can customize your event to any size.
- Global — your event can reach a global audience.
- Accessible — anyone can attend your event, from anywhere.
- Impossible — you can create experiences not possible in the physical world.
This is the start. If you are reading this, you and your event are early. If you take advantage of this opportunity and start experimenting now, you will be ahead of your competitors when the inevitable shift to virtual events becomes mainstream. You’ll know what works and what doesn’t, where the best metaverse platforms for your event are (decentralized or centralized? Gaming or virtual world? Polygon graphics or photorealism?) and the best systems and tools to use to get the most out of your event.
About RLTY — The Metaverse Event Company
RLTY is a collective of Metaverse early adopters, contributing to this growing ecosystem with an infrastructure for building virtual events with a suite of easy-to-use tools. We partner with event organizers across all industries (Music, Arts, Conference, Fashion, Corporate).
The platform is leveraging the most advanced technologies to continually reimagine the boundaries of virtual worlds. Their commitment is to enhance the accessibility and experience across all Metaverse platforms.
RLTY was launched in January 2022 by Raphaël Assouline (co-founder of Geronimo Agency) and Zack Sabban (co-founder of Festicket & Event Genius).
