A new survey suggests that most Americans’ feelings about the metaverse can be summarized as “meh” — but younger generations are open to experiencing concerts and sports events live in virtual reality.
The poll results that Morning Consult shared this week show clear majorities among all adults against four different possible VR activities: experiencing a live sports event, experiencing a live concert, creating a virtual-world avatar and buying virtual apparel for that avatar.
Morning Consult’s survey ran online from March 3 to 5 among a sample of 4,420 adults. It defined boomers as people born from 1946 to 1964, gen X as 1965 to 1980, millennials 1981 to 1996, and gen Z as 1997 to 2012.
According to the survey, VR concerts hold the most hope for successful metaverse events, with 41% of respondents pronouncing themselves “not at all interested” and 14% “not very interested.” And while Generation X and baby boomers took a “get off my lawn” attitude — 55% and 75% sharing some level of disinterest — 61% of millennials and 56% of generation Z respondents said they were open to the idea.
That squares with early interest among entertainment-industry types in staging VR concerts — before Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg latched onto the term “metaverse” and renamed the social-networking firm Meta Platforms, Inc.
“Imagine getting to see your favorite band from a foot away, virtually, and you didn’t have to pay $500 a ticket,” WarnerMedia innovation head Jeremy Toeman said at FierceVideo’s Stream TV Show in November of 2020. “It’s not just about this screen, right here, it’s about the immersive experience inside that screen.”
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Sports came in second in market potential among live VR events: While 48% of adults said they weren’t at all interested, and 14% were not very interested, and even gen Z respondents were cool on the idea (only 47% calling themselves somewhat or very interested), 56% of millennials were at least somewhat interested.
The deepest possible support for VR experiences didn’t involve real-time programming: A full 66% of gen Z survey participants were somewhat or very interested in creating avatars for virtual worlds, followed by 61% of millennials. Gen X-ers were cool on that notion, with only 39% sharing any interest. And baby boomers seemed to hate it outright, with 68% voicing zero interest.
Three of these four demographics shared a “get off my lawn” attitude about buying clothing and accessories for metaverse avatars: 59% of all adults were largely or totally uninterested, as were 70% of gen X, 57% of gen Z and a whopping 91% of boomers. Millennials, however, split 50/50 on this possibility.
That may not bode well for Meta’s ambitions to turn its so-far money-losing metaverse division profitable — ambitions that CNBC’s Sam Shead reported Wednesday include collecting a cut of 47.5% of virtual-asset transactions in its Meta Quest Store.