Retail and Entertainment are the two sectors that benefit most from the immersive and personalized user experience due to the metaverse. Especially in ecommerce, the ability to try on clothing, cosmetics and accessories and interact with staff through one's avatar looks set to be a game changer capable of driving business growth around this market. To get a gauge of the potential of the sector, just take a look at the report E-commerce and Opportunities in the metaverse. The evolution of the costumer experience edited by Francesco Amendola, Program Director of the Executive Master in Data Science, and Valerio Mancini, Director of the Rome Business School Research Center.

These experts estimate that active and present users in the metaverse will exceed 700 million by 2030, with a revenue expectation of $937 billion. By 2035, the metaverse's expected economic impact on Italy's GDP is between €28 billion and €52 billion per year, which opens up great opportunities for Italian companies, which at this point must run to make sure they are not unprepared. The European metaverse market alone will surpass China's in 2030 with an annual growth rate of 36.5 percent and $119.35 billion in sales. In first place will remain the United States with 158.09 billion. Still, according to Statista, virtual worlds in which to live a parallel experience to real life will reach a Total Addressable Market of $1.91 trillion in 2030 in the most conservative scenario, with the possibility of increasing to $4.44 trillion.

The metaverse experience

Beyond the turnover, fueling the success of the metaverse will be the audience. McKinsey estimates that by 2027 people will spend an average of about 3.7 hours a day on the metaverse. Doing what? As mentioned above, the experience will be mainly in the Retail and Entertainment domains. In the former case, we are talking about both "trying on" an outfit and purchasing goods that exist only in digital form. A clear example of this is Tiffany's initiative, which this year launched a line of jewelry in collaboration with CryptoPunks that consists of digitally-formatted pendants made of 18-karat rose or yellow gold containing 30 precious stones or diamonds. It is a limited edition of 250 pieces and can be purchased by owning a 24x24 pixel image worth 30 ETH that is about $51,000.

Nike is already a master at this because it has now gone far beyond experimentation. Collaborating with RTFKT, a sneaker company for the Metaverse, Nike has created a 200,000 collection of customizable digital shoes with varying levels of rarity. The Nike Dunk Genesis cost from $6,000 to $10,000 per pair, and with this initiative the company recorded $183.31 million in revenue from NFT alone in 2022.

The trio of innovators also includes Prada, which launched its #PradaTimeCapsule phygital launches on December 1, 2022: exclusive products marked with both a physical and virtual serial number. This is a custom-designed garment marked with an NFT, possession of which grants access to exclusive events such as live Prada Extends.

The other compartment is Entertainment, which includes Meta-concerts such as the one artist Travis Scott held in 2022 on Fortnite, attended by more than 12 million paying fans. Just put Meta before almost any concept to find the digital transposition of the real experience: meta-fitness (immersive online workout or sports apps that also allow the user to earn rewards in the form of cryptocurrencies or NFTs), meta-vacations (travelers can interact with mixed reality experiences in different areas of their properties).

There is also no shortage of followers in the world of sports, with NFT tokens capable of representing in the form of an image or video an assist, a goal, an athletic gesture or the epic moment of a sports idol's career. One example is the NBA with its NBA Top Shot platform, which launched 25,000 NFT packs to celebrate the NBA 2023 season, allowing each purchaser of card packs to receive an exclusive airdrop.

Aside from concrete examples, there is a large chapter of possibilities. According to data from the ITS Business Services Foundation (ITSSI, 2022), the metaverse could have a $180 billion to $270 billion impact on the academic virtual learning market, $144 billion to $206 billion impact on the advertising market, and $108 billion to $125 billion impact on the gaming market.

The new skills

We said that companies should not be caught unprepared. In fact, to seize the opportunities we mentioned, they need professional figures such as the virtual reality designer (who is in charge of creating immersive digital worlds through 3D tools, such as augmented reality and holograms); the crypto artist (who creates, thanks to NFT technology, digital works); the virtual fashion expert (who designs and creates clothing, virtual accessories and for avatars in the metaverse).