Düsseldorf “The newlyweds’ wish was to be able to get married where no one had ever married before,” Enzo Miccio wrote on the social media platform Instagram on Saturday. The wedding planner of the Hertha BSC professional Kevin-Prince Boateng and his wife Valentina Fradegrada made it possible: on Saturday at 16:30 o’clock Boateng and Fradegrada said “yes” – physically in the Italian Radicondoli and digitally on the Moon in the Metaverse.
Metaverses are considered the next stage of development of the Web. Since Mark Zuckerberg renamed the Facebook group Meta, at the latest, the virtual worlds have been on everyone’s lips. And this is despite the fact that the metaverse as such does not yet exist. Currently, Metaverse is used as a collective term for digital spaces created by the convergence of physical, augmented and virtual reality.
800 Billion Euros of market potential by 2024
The financial service Bloomberg Intelligence estimates the market potential of metaversen to 800 billion euros by 2024. In virtual worlds such as Horizon World, Decentraland and Sandbox, concerts have already been played, clubs have been opened, art has been exhibited and plots have been sold – now the first wedding of a football professional has occurred.
Already in the past, Boateng has been noticed with a fancy lifestyle. His wife Valentina Fradegrada also knows how to use the attention of the media. The Italian is an influencer. Through the location of the wedding ceremony, the couple has not only marketed their wedding in a media-effective way and increased their own market value, but also further fuels the hype around the metaverse.
Wedding in the Metaverse – the next big trend?
The Bundesliga professional sent out the invitations to the virtual wedding digitally and gave his fans the opportunity to attend the wedding. For $ 50, the couple sold tickets to the wedding on the moon. Ticket holders were able to participate in the 3D event from the comfort of their living room. The only requirements for the virtual wedding party were virtual reality glasses and Internet access.
The tickets were paid for, as usual in the Metaverse, with cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum or Bitcoin. The limited ticket quota was already out of stock after a very short time. As it became known on Monday, the proceeds are to be donated to Fradegradas Foundation for Families in Need.
Whether weddings in the Metaverse will be the next big trend remains to be seen. The metaverse has not yet reached the middle of society. Although the game developer Atari has sold a plot in The Sandbox for more than four million dollars and brands such as Nike and Adidas are now offering their sneakers in the Metaverse, speculators and gamers in particular are getting lost in the virtual worlds. Concerts by artists such as Ariana Grande or the FooFighters and weddings by professional footballers could soon change that.
Already the season-ending sprint of the Berlin club Hertha BSC, which was threatened with relegation for a long time, has shown: who, if not Kevin Prince Boateng, can fill something with life.
