Sports, Concerts, and Live Events. Live events, including sports and esports, concerts, festivals, and conferences, present perpetual challenges for broadcasters. Not only do the most-watched ones, such as the Olympics, FIFA World Cup, and Tour de France, put stress on networks, but they often have poor in-venue service for fans who attend them live.

In April 2020, rapper Travis Scott performed a virtual concert within the video game “Fortnite,” where 12.3 million concurrent players attended the first performance. Several months later, in November 2020, rapper Lil Nas X performed a series of similar virtual concerts within the gaming platform “Roblox.”

The platform hosts 9.5 million developers and offers over 24 million “experiences,” including games, in-game concerts, promos, and events. Initial reports attributed the outage to a promotion with Chipotle—the restaurant chain was giving away $1 million worth of free burritos in Roblox in an event that started an hour before servers went down. Roblox denied the promo was the reason for downtime.

While sports media and broadcasting fall into the media category, advertising for live sports events qualifies as entertainment since many of the same venues are used for both concerts and games.

Media has been lifted by the resumption of TV production, which has given networks new content to advertise, while entertainment businesses including theme parks, movie theaters, and concert venues have restarted advertising after their pandemic-induced pauses.

Fortnite has been hosting virtual concerts with real-life artists. QQ Speed, a mobile game developed by Tencent, lets brands, such as Rolls-Royce, design their own virtual cars. Elsewhere, the crisscross between virtual and the real world is already happening in small yet telling ways:.

Fortnite in particular has emerged as a major platform for marketers across industries, thanks to its “metaverse” spin that has allowed for artists like Ariana Grande and Travis Scott to host virtual concerts. Its continued absence from the App Store will reduce potential advertising reach. But the battle still isn’t over, according to eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Yoram Wurmser.

Games like Fortnite and Roblox have led this push, both recently featuring in-game concerts from stars like Ariana Grande and Lil Nas X, respectively. But opportunities for partnerships go beyond the music industry. On Thursday, TIME announced a partnership with Fortnite to create an interactive museum exhibit about the accomplishments of Dr.

eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman discusses the current wave of retail store closures, the seismic shift to online shopping and what retailers should be thinking about during this time. He then talks about why payments firm Square is opening a bank, how you can help your local restaurants and where to watch live streamed music concerts from home.

Lazada, for example, leverages both its livestreaming portal, LazLive, and traditional TV to broadcast concerts and promotional interviews with celebrities during its shopping events. Following this year’s 9.9 sales festival, Shopee reported strong engagement with its livestreaming platform, Shopee Live, as well as with its social media pages and in-app games.

The types of virtual events that respondents most wanted to attend were concerts and movie screenings. Content aside, the introduction of a more powerful and lower-priced device, as well as wider 5G availability, could potentially reinvigorate the consumer segment.

Since smaller businesses tend to be underbanked, PSPs have an opportunity to build out services sellers need and offer them in concert with other products. At the same time, major banks are doubling down on services for small businesses—JPMorgan has built out WePay since acquiring it, and Amex recently purchased Kabbage, for example—to move in on the sector.

However, not all of Twitch’s user growth is coming from GVC, as the platform has become increasingly popular for content outside of the gaming world, such as livestreams of traditional sports broadcasts, live events like concerts, and more mainstream influencer content like product tutorials and reviews.

Among those consuming premium content, trust is the most important factor, ranking above ease of use and the number of ads, research shows. But trust can be a fuzzy concept and establishing this trust can be challenging.

Big Tech invests heavily in sustainability as consumer and regulator concerns ramp up: Apple and Amazon announced progress toward their environmental initiatives ahead of a United Nations climate change conference.

Klarna implemented a number of changes to make its UK business more transparent and limit consumer BNPL risks.