🏎️🏁 Bored Apes DAO Propose F1 Team Partnership

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Introduction

👋 Welcome back to another edition of Sporting Crypto!This week I received my first messages from friends about the crypto market.That’s how you know we’re in the middle of a bull market, and it’s the first time I’ve seen retail this late to the party. Crypto cycles, because there is a lack of regulated means for investing, are often driven by retail traders, investors and funds.

This time it’s different. The Bitcoin ETF that was finally accepted several weeks back has driven huge amounts of capital directly into Bitcoin, which has had a cascading effect on the rest of the market. The ETFs make it as easy for institutions and investors to invest their capital as safely as buying gold or a stock, without needing to deal with the complexities of having a crypto wallet.

Retail is not alone, however. Many enterprise brands have been ‘building’ during a down market, but some have seemingly stopped thinking about Web3 just as interest in the market has returned. This is strange because the least interesting thing about crypto is the price. The brands I’ve spoken to that are best placed have been structuring, strategising and building when the headlines said “Crypto is Dead”. 

If you’re only interested when the price is up, your incentives are probably going to drive a product or campaign that your fans or customers don’t care about.

There’s a real opportunity here. The technology is very real and isn’t going away So why let Bitcoin hitting $60k again guide your strategy?

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Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) have got a bad rap in sports, and mostly for good reason too. When you see a DAO saying they're going to bid for Manchester United Football Club or the Denver Broncos when knowing full well that there's no way they will get that money together to do so, or even be allowed to carry out the proposed purchase due to regulatory reasons, you just think it's maddening that people are using this technology for, at best, a naive attempt at doing something good and, at worst, a scammy, dubious way to take money from unknowing fans.

Like all of Web3 however, there are some shining lights. LinksDAO, for example, formed after an NFT sale to own and operate a golf course. They accomplished that goal last year and are now in the process of trying to acquire their second, as per their latest on-chain proposal. Krause House, who were formed to own an NBA team, were named-checked as a potential buyer of the Phoenix Suns when they were put up for sale. Karate Combat, a fast-growing combat league, are governed by a DAO and have a governance token; $KARATE.

Now we are seeing a crypto-native, decentralized organization — ApeCoin DAO touted as a sponsor for a redacted Formula One team.

This is interesting because a proposal can be posted by literally anyone for anything, and those who hold the ApeCoin token can vote for or against the proposal. For example, a group posted a proposal to build an audio player app aggregating all Bored Ape community-generated audio content, asking for 50,000 ApeCoin (~$100k) to build it. It passed. The idea is for the community, and third parties, to submit proposals that they think will be to the benefit of the ecosystem.

The proposal we dive into today has been submitted on behalf of a Formula One team, proposing a multiyear partnership between the redacted team, and ApeCoin DAO. Discussed in this newsletter:

🦍 What is ApeCoin DAO?🏎️🏁The Sponsorship Proposal for [REDACTED] F1 team🧠Concluding Thoughts & Analysis

🦍 What is ApeCoin DAO?

ApeCoin DAO is the organisation that governs the Ape ecosystem (Bored Ape Yacht Club, the most famous example of IP in the ecosystem), via ApeCoin, a token launched last year.

It is a token that was launched to help incentivise improvement in the Ape ecosystem and decentralise its governance.

As they put it:

The ApeCoin community governs itself via the ApeCoin DAO, the decentralized governance framework that supports the Ecosystem Fund. The DAO follows a proposal process to vote on how the APE Foundation will distribute the Ecosystem Fund to promote a diverse and self-sustaining ecosystem.

And because there are a lot of entities in this Ape ecosystem, here’s an overview:

• Yuga Labs - Yuga Labs is a web3 company best known for the creation of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. It will be a community member in the ApeCoin DAO and will adopt ApeCoin as the primary token across new projects.

• BAYC - The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of digital art crafted into NFTs where the token itself doubles as a membership to a swamp club for apes.

• APE Foundation - The APE Foundation is the steward of ApeCoin, a legal entity that exists to administer the decisions of the ApeCoin DAO.

• ApeCoin DAO - A decentralized governance organization that will make decisions regarding Ecosystem Fund allocations, governance rules, projects, partnerships, and more. ApeCoin DAO membership is open to all ApeCoin holders.

• $APE - The symbol for the ApeCoin token.

62% of the ApeCoin’s created are allocated to the ecosystem fund, which funds the proposals the DAO is pitched.

A lot of this might seem alien and weird, but let’s explain what this all means in plain terms.

A DAO is a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation. In simple terms, a DAO is an internet collective — think the digital version of a co-op in traditional business. Everything from voting to resource allocation is done on-chain and transparently, in most of these.

Bored Ape Yacht Club is an NFT project launched by YUGA Labs. 

The ApeCoin token was launched to facilitate the growth and governance of the Ape Coin DAO.

YUGA Labs, launched the Ape Coin Foundation in collaboration with their community and external resources to become a steward to the Ape Coin DAO.

The ApeCoin DAO has a board, and anyone with an ApeCoin token can vote for or against (or abstain from) proposals called APE Improvement Proposals (AIP).

🏎️🏁The Sponsorship Proposal for [REDACTED] F1 Team

The AIP is titled: ApeCoin DAO multi-year partnership with Redacted, a Formula One Team

The proposal is facilitated by the APE Foundation on behalf of Formula 1 Team (Redacted).

The abstract of the proposal reads…

The APE Foundation has been approached by a team with a strong history of competing in Formula One. We are thrilled to present this proposal for a potential groundbreaking multi-year partnership between ApeCoin DAO and Redacted, an F1 racing team.

Should it pass, ApeCoin DAO will be designated as a non-exclusive ‘Team Partner’, and exclusively as a ‘community coin partner’. This makes me think that this is a team that already has a blockchain partner and that this new sponsorship category is crafted specifically for ApeCoin DAO.In the ‘tactical considerations’ section — the proposal breaks down four key areas:

• Identify opportunities to integrate ApeCoin through structured events & programming

• Brand amplification through the redacted F1 Team’s branding assets

• Offer hospitality & high-end VIP experiences that add to ApeCoin DAO’s current initiatives

• Propose compelling use cases showcasing ApeCoin solutions

Beyond sponsorship marks and VIP sponsors passes, ApeCoin DAO will also hope to ingrain itself as a Web3 partner from a tech perspective.

As per the proposal

Additionally, the F1 team would develop a special one-race jersey worn by their drivers during one Grand Prix, that is ApeCoin branded — with sales exclusively to ApeCoin holders. Some more traditional brand placements will also be available, with ApeCoin DAO’s logo featuring on the redacted team’s car, alongside season-long brand placement on various other collateral. The overall cost of the partnership is priced at €2.5 million per annum, for a two-year initial term.

ApeCoin DAO would retain the option to renew the partnership for a third year.

🧠Concluding Thoughts & Analysis

The Ape ecosystem is seen by the vast majority of the world as ‘silly’ and those are optics that the ApeCoin DAO will be keen to change. Whether or not a €2.5 million a year partnership with an F1 team does that, I’m not sure, but it does at least expand the brand awareness of the Ape ecosystem to a large audience and dissociate themselves from being purely an NFT project, centring around IP focusing on cartoon animations of apes.

👥DAOs are hard work. 

As I’ve written previously, the irony is that DAOs have not done the Autonomous or Organised part of the acronym very well.

The beauties of having a global online community who have ‘skin in the game’ are a blessing, but also a curse from a logistics and decision-making perspective — often creating bureaucratic nightmares.

‘Leadersless’ institutions (like a DAO) can create situations where so many cooks slow the process down, which is the opposite of what is intended with a DAO.

DAOs are cool and something is interesting here both theoretically and in practice (as shown by the likes of LinksDAO and Karate Combat) but there’s a long way to go in their development as an operational model before they carry out incredibly complex tasks at the same speed that traditional organisations do.

On that note, should the AIP pass to sponsor the redacted Formula 1 team, it will be interesting to see how the DAO allocates tasks. Anyone at a brand who is in charge of executing the inventory signed by a commercial director knows that it is a massive effort to partition and distribute the inventory you’ve acquired, and also more importantly, make the most of it.

I think that this is an angle that ApeCoin DAO are probably underestimating, and will be shocked by if the proposal passes. Overall, this feels like a watershed moment in seeing a DAO potentially partner with a sports brand of this calibre, even though it remains to be seen how well they will execute should the proposal pass.

A quirky story mirroring a market that feels frothier by the week.

💡 Sporting Crypto Spotlight - Ep. 15 of the Podcast!

In Ep. 15 of the Podcast I was lucky enough to speak to Matt Lord, Director of Technology & Digital Systems at SailGP!

Watch the episode on YouTube!

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More Sports & Web3 Stories

• LinksDAO propose the purchase of a US-based golf course (Read more here)

• Esports Giant Team Liquid Launching Fan Rewards Platform on Sui (Read more here)

• Manchester United Football Club launch their first player collection with Bruno Fernandes (Read more here)

• MotoGP team Gresini partner with ExPlus (Read more here)

• Rugby Europe and The RugbyDAO Announce Partnership (Read more here)

• ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski Hacked on Social Media by NFT Scammers (Read more here)

• According to Altman Solon’s 2023 Global Sports Survey, only 26% of Sports Execs think that Web3 and ownership models will move the needle (Read more here)

• Northampton Town have partnered with NFT fantasy game Ultimate Champions (Read more here)

• FC Barcelona took part in the NFT International Congress in Paris 2024 (Read more here)

General ‘Stuff’ that Could Impact You

• VanEck launches NFT platform, set to offer split ownership of token-backed assets (Read more here)

• Loyalty+ Gets Avalanche Multiverse Fund Support to Further Empower Brands to Launch Rewards Programs (Read mor here)

• From ThirdWeb: Consumer Crypto Report (Read more here)

• Backpack Raise $17M for Crypto Exchange Platform (Read mor here)

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