Manchester United launch ‘Collect United’, Free Digital Collectibles for the 23/24 Season

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Introduction 🔌🔧

I thought August would be quite slow and I’d struggle to pick out the headlines to analyse on a deeper level, but that hasn’t been the case.

There’s been an incredible amount of news from a Web3 perspective and a lot of headlines on the sports side as well… so plenty to keep us busy.

And things are getting busier on the Sporting Crypto front.

We have lots of exciting events coming up to wrap the year up, and some great podcasts to get into your ears (every 2nd Thursday between now and Feb 2024!).

Before you get stuck into the newsletter…

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Manchester United launch ‘Collect United’, Free Digital Collectibles for the 23/24 Season

The Sporting Crypto Newsletter is supported by The HBAR Foundation.

When a big sports team does something in Web3, it’s very rarely successful or something that fans genuinely love.

But, there’s very little to dislike about what Manchester United Football Club have done so far in this space.

As a public company with one of the biggest football brands in the world, you could forgive them for perhaps not attempting anything at all, or just being incredibly cautious.

But Manchester United have probably got one of the most robust and well-executed Web3 strategies in sports.

This newsletter covers:

😈 Manchester United’s Web3 Journey⚽ What Collect United is🤔 Why this is the right way to approach your Sports Web3 strategy

😈 Manchester United’s Web3 Journey

Manchester United haven’t had that many Web3 partnerships.

This is most probably due to the blockbuster deal they signed with Blockchain Tezos in Feb 2022, worth a reported £20m a year.

At that price, you would presume that Tezos are given at the very least a right of first refusal on all of Manchester United’s blockchain activities.

Before we get into the weeds of Manchester United’s latest Web3 launch, here’s a chronological view of their Web3 journey so far:

1. February 10, 2022: Manchester United announced a multi-year training kit sponsorship deal with blockchain platform Tezos, worth around £20 million per year making them their official Blockchain partner.

2. November, 2022: Manchester United launch a free-to-claim NFT drop, Man Utd: The Keys, claimed by almost 1m people

3. December, 2022: Manchester United launched its first-ever official digital collectables which were free-to-claim, following up with a paid, £30 per NFT collection with a supply of 7,777.

4. July 7th, 2023: The 1992/93 collection; a limited range of digital collectibles to commemorate the 92/93 campaign – when the club clinched the first-ever Premier League title.

5. August 21, 2023: Manchester United launch Collect United - free-to-claim digital collectibles on matchdays for the 2023/24 season.

⚽ What Collect United is

For the 23/24 football season, 48 hours ahead of each home fixture for the men's and women’s Manchester United teams — a new collectible is available for Manchester United fans to claim. And they’re totally free.

On the opening day of the season against Wolves at home, 𝟮𝟯,𝟳𝟯𝟬 individuals claimed the first 'Collect United' collectible.There’s a gamified component to the collectibles as well, with rewards and perks available to fans who 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲 𝗮 𝘀𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝗲𝘁, in with a chance of winning the following:🎟️ Free VIP trip to Old Trafford to watch United play🏃 Exclusive invitations to watch the first team train✍️ Signed physical merchandise such as shirts

Digging into this a bit more, the potential prizes are split between league and European matches. Collecting all league matches gives you a chance to watch one of United’s training sessions, whilst collecting the European games gives you a chance to win signed player jerseys.

Collecting every match gives you a chance to win a VIP trip to watch Manchester United. The user experience is pretty seamless if you’re a Manchester United fan.

Fans can head to the Manchester United Collectibles page, users can click collect now to claim their free collectible, commemorating a specific game (up to 48 hours prior to kick-off).

Users are then prompted to connect their existing crypto wallet or use a social account to sign up.

This is quite a nice user flow because it allows for both crypto natives who already have wallets to connect and claim seamlessly, but is equally easy for a crypto novice to sign up and claim.

The claimed NFT is simple in design and includes player images, as well as the game and date. The Manchester United logo is also incorporated, as well as a background design synonymous with the club’s previous NFT collections.

The dashboard to view the digital collectible is incredibly simple, a simple page that allows users to scroll through your collection.

It might seem like I’m pointing out something simple here, but you’d be shocked at how many projects I’ve seen that have invested very little time in their user flow, or in fact the simple showcasing of the digital collectables.

🤔 Why this is the right way to approach your Sports Web3 strategy

If you're a sports brand working on a Web3 proposition, remember:  

𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 > 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗽𝗮𝘆𝗱𝗮𝘆.

And refreshingly, every single brand I've spoken to over the last 3 months is trying to build an on-chain loyalty scheme that actually allows their fans to 𝙙𝙤 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 with the digital collectibles they claim or buy.

Manchester United are no different, they are actively trying to engage their fanbase through commemorative NFTs.

They’ve created something simple and easy to understand for the layman, but still sophisticated enough (with enough cool VIP experiences) that a crypto-native fan may want to participate.

A lot of sports NFT projects try and concentrate on a more niche audience in order to monetise.

I’ve lost count of the number of conversations I’ve had with sports brands who primarily want to target the ‘crypto crowd’ and ‘acquire new fans’.

When you lay the numbers out in terms of how few crypto wallets there are (active), this makes no sense. The reality of it is there are quite a few, easier ways to ‘acquire’ or ‘engage’ new fans.

Sports brands should be using this technology, the ability to own something online in a digital sphere, to engage a much broader audience — not figure out how they can make the most money from a few crypto natives that may or may not engage with the brand in the future.

And now you might be thinking, why do this?

Why give away all these digital collectables?

Simply put, having an on-chain network of fans is incredibly powerful.

It might not be apparent right now, but in an era where social media is driven by algorithms, and AI pushing us to a more segmented, walled digital experience... Maybe there's value in having an on-chain network of fans that has gone out of their way to claim digital content from your brand...?

And Manchester United have funnelled a lot of those fans into their Discord, with almost 100k people in the server.

Remember when FC Barcelona were in the headlines because they only had a database over just under 1% of the fans they claimed to have globally?

Now let’s compare that to Manchester United.

In the past 12-18 months, they themselves have ‘registered’ almost 1 million fans on-chain via free digital collectables, and 10% of those are in a Discord server, with 2.5% of them claiming digital content on gameday (small sample size, know). Via various reports, Manchester United have between 600 million to 1 billion fans worldwide. We can take those numbers with a pinch of salt.

The on-chain network, however, is there for us all to verify.

🧠 Concluding Thoughts

If you're a brand that hasn't yet dipped their toe in the Web3 waters, don't worry, you're not too late. I'm a firm believer in the fact that brands have first-mover disadvantages in Web3 for the most part.

But if you are joining the party, don't try and sell with your first move. There is literally no upside in doing so unless you're a brand with a very specific audience (luxury goods are an example of this).

Manchester United have delivered a lot of value and there is clearly a lot of demand for these free NFTs.

Where they can take these going forward, is unknown but also exciting. When you have that broad an audience and that many on-chain claims, there are many possibilities.

I’ll be very interested to see how many claims they get by the end of the season. At almost 25,000 within their opening game against Wolves, you would expect Manchester United to have over 500,000 claims at the end of the season at this pace.

McLaren Racing’s free-to-claim campaign has seen between 100-250k claims per Grand Prix, so far for every race in the 2023 season. They have had over 2 million claims so far this season.

I have a hunch that Manchester United’s numbers could trend upward from their opening day, and I think it’s going to be really interesting to see what the club do beyond prize draws with these on-chain networks of fans.

💡 Sporting Crypto Spotlight - Sporting Crypto Podcast Ep 2

We Launched Ep 2. of the Sporting Crypto Podcast! In this episode, I was joined by Alex Amsel (aka Sillytuna). He's an award-winning game designer, has been in Web3 for a decade, sold the 6th most expensive NFT of all time and owns the first-ever NFT on Ethereum. Watch here or listen below! 👇

More Sports & Web3 Stories

• Red Bull, Rik Oostenbroke and ByBits collection ‘Momentum’ is released this week (Read more here)

• Manchester City Football Club Brings Blue Moon Game to Roblox (Read more here)

• EX SPORTS partners with IQ Protocol, launches NFT lending mechanism (Read more here)

• ALTS by Adidas and BAPE have collaborated auctioning‘Fresh Forum’, limited to 100 pairs only. (Read more here)

• The RugbyDAO and Crossmint Partner to Launch The Leading Web3 Hub for Rugby Fans Worldwide (Read more here)

• After breaking the World Record in the 100 back and 200 fly during XIX World Championships in Budapest, Thomas Ceccon and Kristof Milak received custom-minted non-fungible (Read more here)

• Ultra Launches New Trailblazing eSports Platform, built on crypto rails (read more here)

• OKX and Manchester City Celebrate Sleeve Partnership with AI-Generated 'Year 3000' Murals in Manchester Ahead of 2023-24 Home Opener (Read more here)

• Pakistan’s Cricket Players reluctant to sign central contracts, ask PCB for a bigger share in their digital rights, namecheck NFTs (Read more here)

• Binance have partnered with Ferencvaros, the Hungarian football team (Read more here) 

• Norwich have partnered with Alphaverse who have become their ‘primary partner’ (Read more here)

• Chiliz Labs announces strategic partnership with Alphaverse, Norwich City’s new sponsors (Read more here)

General ‘Stuff’ that Could Impact You

• Pokemon Cards have hit the blockchain… sort of (Read more here)

• OpenSea have seen some backlash from the NFT community over their handling of creator royalties (Read more here)

• McDonald’s Singapore has launched a digital collectable directly minted on the McDonald’s app (Read more here)

• Leading games publisher Zynga have announced their first Web3 game; Sugartown (Read more here)

• Coca-Cola were part of Coinbase’s new blockchain launch; Onchainsummer with their ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ NFT drop (Read more here)

Thanks for reading the latest edition of the Sporting Crypto newsletter. I’m happy to see so many people enjoying and sharing it with their networks.

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