Paris Hilton announced this week that her company, 11:11 Media, will bring her world to the immersive virtual gaming world of The Sandbox.
There, she will launch a “land” where she will interact with her fans and sell digital goods. The platform said Hilton was “planning social and community events such as rooftop parties and magical social experiences at its virtual mansion in Malibu” — with 11 copies of the Hilton-inspired avatars.
The Sandbox, which describes itself as a leading “decentralized virtual world” that is “part virtual real estate and part amusement park”, has 300 established partnerships, with the likes of Warner Music Group and video game maker Ubisoft, along with other celebrities such as Snoop Dogg and Steve Aoki , along with brands like The Smurfs and Adidas.
In an exclusive interview with CNBC, Hilton said she wants to bring her own metaverse from Roblox to other platforms.
“Snoop Dogg launched his world out there, which is incredible, and I was so excited when I saw it,” she said. “I’m really excited to bring the world of Paris to everywhere – we’ll be working with two more platforms.”
At The Sandbox, Paris-inspired NFTs will sell and host virtual parties — but she says this is just the beginning of what she hopes to build.
“Right now, we’re mostly focused on experiments and not monetization because that’s just not the focus at the moment,” Hilton said. “But we will be making digital wearables and working with different brands and there are a lot of exciting projects that I can’t announce yet.”
Hilton’s first step into the metaverse was when it built “Paris Hilton World” inside Roblox late last year. She launched Space with a virtual New Year’s Eve party where she played the role of DJ. Then she did the DJ job for what she called the “Neon Carnival” at Coachella time. Roblox said Hilton’s virtual world has been visited by nearly 544,000 fans – but it wouldn’t say how much revenue was generated.
For Hilton, virtual presence is an opportunity to reach more people — without traveling the 250 days in the year it did before the pandemic.
“On New Years Eve, I was DJing in the Maldives. It was my honeymoon and I was playing and there were more people in Paris World than there were in New York Times Square,” Hilton said. “At Neon Carnival, we had nearly half a million people there and in the real-life party there were 5,000. This is the power of the metaverse where you get people from all over the world to be able to have fun and experience things that are usually, you know, exclusive events.”
Paris Hilton attends a special presentation of “Vogue x Snapchat: Redefining The Body, curated by Edouard Enninful OBE”, an interactive Augmented Reality (AR) exhibition, at Center d’art La Malmaison on June 19, 2022 in Cannes, France.
David M. Bennett | Getty Images
Hilton started investing in cryptocurrency in 2016 — before the rise and fall of cryptocurrency — and has been selling NFTs since last April. Before that market went down recently, last year she sold one for more than $1 million. It has also invested in a number of startups in the space, including Genies, which creates custom avatars and has attracted investment from former Disney CEO Bob Iger, artist and model Priyanka Chopra and other notables.
Hilton is now looking at how to connect its real-world business – such as a sportswear line – to its digital business.
“We want to be able to do that [something] Where people can buy the tracksuit and then have a digital copy to wear it,” Hilton said. That’s what we’ll be doing a lot – things that happen in real life, I’m going to make them also happen in the metaverse at the same time.”
It is talking to other metaverse platforms to expand its presence. She didn’t say any, but she did say that she likes what his parents are on Facebook dead he did.
Hilton’s 11:11 Media is private and does not disclose financial matters, but it said the company’s business has doubled from last year to this year and expects to turn in tens of millions of dollars this year.
There’s also no word on what kind of profits – or losses – it’s seen from its crypto investments over the years, but her company said it has generated $3.5 million in revenue from NFTs this year.
As for what’s going on with the metaverse, and the NFTs that have promoted it over the years, it’s too early to say.
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