Marshmello will score big when he headlines the opening ceremony of the UEFA World Champions League Final later this month.
Taking place in Porto, Portugal on May 29, the match between Manchester City and Chelsea (both English Premiership teams) will be opened by a six-minute virtual performance by the EDM star, with additional special guests to be announced in the coming weeks.
The opening ceremony and match, which will be broadcast to more than 200 countries, are presented by UEFA and Pepsi, a UEFA Champions League partner since 2015. (Pepsi also sponsors the halftime show of the United States’ biggest sporting event, the Super Bowl.) Previous UEFA opening ceremony performers have included Dua Lipa and Alicia Keys.
In a preview clip for the performance, Marshmello can be seen deliberating between cities for the match, with locations suggestions coming from some of the biggest stars of the sport — including Argentine icon Lionel Messi, French star Paul Pogba and English player Jadon Sancho — while ‘Mello’s 2020 Juice Wrld collab “Come & Go” plays in the background. Watch the clip below.
The 2021 UEFA World Champions League Final was originally scheduled to take place at Istanbul’s Atatürk Stadium, but was moved to Portugal on May 13 after the U.K. listed Istanbul on its “red list” of COVID-19 travel destinations, which would have meant that fans from the U.K. would not have been able to attend.
According to a statement from the Union of European Football Associations, the organization “discussed moving the match to England but, despite exhaustive efforts on the part of the Football Association and the authorities, it was not possible to achieve the necessary exemptions from U.K. quarantine arrangements.” Portugal remains on the U.K.’s green list, meaning fans can travel to the country for the match.
Meanwhile, the rest of us can watch from home when ‘Mello makes history as the first electronic producer to play the globally-renowned sporting event.
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