We welcome 12 new subscribers to the Sporting Crypto Newsletter who have joined us over the last week!

Join 302 readers who are interested in exploring where Sports meets Crypto. If you're reading this and still haven't signed up, click the 'Subscribe' button below to join sports industry leaders learning about Web3!

If you’re already subbed - thank you very much. Please be sure to share the newsletter with your friends and colleagues!

Intro Notes, Plugs & Amendments 🔌🔧

300 subscribers!When I started this newsletter I didn’t really know what to expect. Honestly speaking, it was just a way for me to get thoughts on ‘paper’ and craft my own ideas about what’s going on in Crypto more broadly but with this newsletter, more specifically to sports.

A quick PSA, the last newsletter of the year will be posted on the 20th of December, then resume on either the 10th or 17th of Jan 2021 depending on how crazy the start of the year is!

🔌Plugs!🔌

🔌I’m speaking at 3 events this week! If you’re at any of them, please do say hi :)

1. Focus - International production - Non-Fungible Tokens: Power to the Producer

2. NFT CRACKER - Moderating the Sports x NFT panel

3. SportsTechie - Sports OS: "Frictionless, Customized and Digital: The Demands of Tomorrow's Fans"

🔌 I launched an NFT documentary with the NFTs WTF DAO. You can listen here!

🔌 Early days, but if you're interested in getting ahead of the curve and sponsoring the newsletter - feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn. I've had some people reach out already, but I'll only accept those who I think will be genuinely engaging and benefit readers :)

Stories & projects of the week

Non-Fungible Turf: A Soccer NFT Project…to better the game

The relationship between crypto & football (or for the US audience Soccer) is strange in the UK and some parts of Europe.In the US, NBA Top Shots have paved the way for what has become a fruitful endeavour for both parties. FTX partnering with Miami Heat, Coinbase with the NBA, Dapper Labs with the NFL - things are moving at a much more rapid pace in the US and they’re being done in a better way.

In the UK however, the Premier League are investigating growing links between clubs and crypto firms…but also considering an NFT partnership.

An interesting headline!But I think a necessary one. The Premier League and football clubs within it need to think long and hard when it comes to crypto partnerships.

This is, after all, the most watched league in the world. 

There is a responsibility that due diligence is carried out in the right way.

Here’s an extract from the article above which cites Man City’s failed partnership with a firm called 3Key, and Barcelona’s cancellation of a partnership with a platform called Ownix.

This is all obviously bad.Football clubs need to do more due diligence, end of. There have to be frameworks provided to clubs so that they can actually partner with entities that do some good for their supporters and clubs other than simply looking at crypto partnerships with a commercial lens.

The frameworks could be as simple as:

1. Who are the entity in question and are they reputable & legitimate?

2. What ways does this partnership actually add value to our fanbase and community?

3. Is this a money first partnership?

4. How authentic does this feel?

5. How are we going to provide education to the masses about what we’re partnering with?

6. Have supporters groups been talked to, in order to avoid bad optics?

Now I’ve written those 6 questions, at my desk, in 60 seconds. That’s pretty much how long it should have taken Man City and Barcelona to realise the entities they were about to partner with, weren’t the ones.

Big football clubs also have a responsibility to not give crypto a bad name.

Why?

If like me, you believe that blockchain technology, crypto and NFTs are going to fundamentally change the way we live over the next 10 years - then it seems quite important.

In this section, I thought it was appropriate to highlight the above - before talking about a really cool, feel-good story…I came across this last week: Finding the Grassroots in NFTs: Canadian Youth Soccer Club Strikes a New Fundraising Venture.

So what’s the story?Taken directly from their notion site:

Enter: Non-Fungible Turf

Each piece of turf (5000 in total) represents a portion of the pitch that they want to build. This is awesome. Fundraising through NFTs is great because of the liquidity, and you’re showing something ‘tangible’ that the donor receives. It’s a slight tweak on traditional raising, but it’s powerful.

This is going to become the norm. If I was a music artist, for example, I could sell NFTs to raise funds for my next album - and give those backers a stake of my royalties from that specific project. My fans become my backers. Slightly different to this, but it’s very interesting in the sense that you can give access to people on the ground level. To bring them on a journey with you. And they can prove that they own part of that journey.

The feel-good factor here is amazing, and it’s a fantastic start. This however is still surface level in terms of the potential of NFTs. The creators have chosen not to take on secondary sales, but I think there’s a missed opportunity. What about taking 5% secondary sales and putting that toward a fund that helps underprivileged children travel to training, or get new kits?

I also think there’s something more that could be done to really engrain the people that are purchasing those turf pieces within the operations of the club? A newsletter or monthly piece of content that is specifically token gated to turf owners that gives them an update on what the funds are doing?

Owning NFTs can mean literally anything

I love this project a lot and I understand why you’d do something quite surface level. This is still a confusing space. In my opinion, we’re at a point now where we were in 2008 with E-commerce, where my dad was scared of buying things online due to fraud.

That’s where we’re at with Crypto. 

And I think that’s why entities are dipping their toes in, rather than going a bit more out there in terms of what they create.

NFTs are ubiquitous so set fewer parameters, not more. This for me is the start of something cool though.

The beautiful game deserves more, and I’m a strong believer that technology is going to be a big part of doing so. 

Crypto Deep Dive:…

No Crypto deep dive this week - launching the documentary has made me time poor these last 2 weeks! Back to it next week :)

More big stories & things to put on your radar

• Footium, NFT’s answer to Football Manager - explained in a thread below

• BAYC are gargantuan, and Adidas should be lucky they’ve partnered with them…not the other way round. 

• Reebok had a very successful NFT launch

• Peter Crouch shilling NFTs, very strange

• Interesting article by the verge:

• Messi launching more digital collectables 

Great reads, great tweeting and more general ‘stuff’

• One37pm have done a 25 days of POAP for Christmas, it’s pretty cool:

• The great resignation part 1:

• Jack Dorsey steps down from Twitter in the great resignation part 2:

• This is where we are with NFTs…

• Adidas continue to kill it

• More Adidas content for your eyeballs, this sold for 17 ETH

• Great tweet by Chris Dixon

• Are Apple going to war with Web3?

Thanks!

Thanks for reading my first ever Sporting Crypto newsletter! If you enjoyed it, please tell your friends who might be interested - and share it on social :)