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Intro Notes, Plugs & Amendments 🔌🔧

To start with I have some personal news to share in that today was my last day as a full time employee at COPA90, as their head of Cryptomedia. I will continue to work with their amazing team in a consulting capacity! You can read more about it here on LinkedIn. I’m really excited for what is to come!

Another bloody week for Crypto markets. Everything seems to hit the fan whenever I go away…as per previous newsletters, I need to stop doing exactly that.

I’ve written previously that we still had a way to go in this crypto bear market. There wasn’t quite enough doom, gloom and pain.

Now, we’re experiencing massive amounts of pain in the market. Huge liquidations have happened globally in retail and funds alike, and the implications will be far-reaching. The bottom feels closer, but I’m not sure we’re quite there yet.

I’ll be in New York next week for NFT NYC and It’ll be really interesting to see what the energy is like amid what has been a very bloody drop in markets.

Below I wrote about several lessons I learned from being part of the big crypto down cycle in 2018:

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🔌 If you would like me to come to an event and speak about Sports & Crypto / NFTs, please reach out on the above platforms.

🔌 I’m going to be in NYC for NFT NYC at the end of June. If you’d like to connect IRL - hit me up with an email!

🔌 I’ll be in Orlando from the 25th-27th of June if any subscribers want to connect!

This Week’s Deep Dive: Steph Curry from NF3

I’ve been largely critical of athletes doing NFTs. In fact, I’ve written a lot about how I’m unsure how much product market fit there is for athletes doing their own brand NFTs.

Or, even partnering with a brand to launch NFTs.

In December 2021, Steph Curry did something quite interesting.

The NBA legend and current record 3 point scorer launched his own NFTs.

He, and Under Armour, who we’ve seen the superstar sporting for most of his career, launched the “Genesis Curry Flow” NFT to celebrate his record-breaking achievement for most 3-pointers in NBA history.

The NFTs sold out very quickly, and have had over 2000 ETH in trading volume since their creation.

The price of them, however, like most NFTs has dropped dramatically, but you’d still need to cough up about $100 to own a pair. And beyond the price, they do look really good, visually.

So what was the playbook here?

Steph Curry has a huge brand. The biggest in basketball outside LeBron James, and he has largely been labelled the reason Basketball has changed to become a more shot-dictated game.

On the court, he’s often one of the smaller players- looking slight in comparison to his peers- and whilst he’s still extremely athletic - relies on his skill, agility and shooting prowess to dominate games rather than physicality. This has made him popular with fans of the game who aren’t 6’9 and 250 pounds.

A slightly more relatable face of the NBA from a physical perspective (although at 6’3, Steph is still very much a tall guy). (1) the power that the Steph Brand has, alongside Under Armour, cannot be understated. 

And the way this was executed (2) by dropping this NFT during an absolutely historic moment for Steph and the NBA, the euphoria was at its highest for Stephen Curry. 

We saw E-Sports team 100Thieves do something similar when they won a 2021 gaming championship, allowing anyone to claim a free NFT on polygon.

Celebratory NFTs, seem to work. Sharing that moment with your fans in a digitally native way that gives them something they own.

With all that in mind, a huge brand in the Web2 space does not mean you’re guaranteed to sell out, and, athletes looking to sell NFTs or even give them away, shouldn’t take things for granted.

The team (Basketball Headz by Under Armour & Curry Brand) partnered up (3) with multiple successful NFT projects to give permissioned access to the CyberKongz, HAPE, Chibi Dinos, and Smilesss communities respectively. A smart move to ensure that enough NFT native collectors get in on the action.

So to start with, the Steph Curry playbook was:

1. Create NFTs that leverage a massive brand in sports, and partner brands, in the form of digital sneakers

2. Launch at an opportune moment (celebratory achievement) when you are being talked about globally

3. Created permissioned access to NFT native collectors

What came next?

On May 7th, ‘Basketball Headz’ by Under Armour and Curry Brand launched NF3s.

What are they?(4) NF3s are 9 free claimable NFTs for each 3-pointer Steph Curry scores in the playoffs. And he averages ~4 3-pointers per game in the playoffs.

So there’s going to be a fair few to go around.

The NF3s were also freely claimable to all Steph Curry Genesis NFT holders (5), continuing the value given to that initial community.

The playbook continued to:4. Create free NFTs

5. Generate value and engage your existing community

What comes next?

After all the NF3s are claimed and sold out, serums based on each partner community will be available for purchase. They can then be mixed together with the NF3s to create Basketball Headz avatars.

This is quite novel and creates a story for NFT collectors. The mixture of selling the initial genesis collections to appease the sneakerhead type collectors in the NFT space who love Steph Curry and basketball, as well as giving more green collectors the chance to claim them for free, is pretty cool.

Add to the fact that these are alterable using traits inspired from other communities that Basketball Headz have already partnered with, and you get a layered, novel and awesome collection that leverages one of the largest brands in sports.

Steph has been lighting it up on the court with Golden State Warriors, off the court on his brand with Under Armour, and now I think we’ve seen the best NFT drop by an athlete that not that many people are talking about.

This playbook is far from perfect, but I feel that athlete NFT drops can learn a lot from what Steph and Basketball Headz have done.

Create, engage, collaborate and don’t put money first. 

More sports crypto stories & things to put your radar

• The UFC have sealed a sponsorship deal with VeChain

• CatBlox & Puma have partnered up to collaborate on NFTs

• An interesting one. LEAP is trying to give visibility to more footballers who are disadvantaged.

• Bitci haven’t paid the money they owed to multiple La Liga soccer clubs. Their partnerships with MotoGP & Baskonia have ended, and FIBA are also waiting for payments…this doesn’t look good.

Great reads, great tweeting and more general ‘stuff’ that could impact you

• Ryan Watkins is a must follow when markets get choppy. 

• NFT markets have followed crypto markets, and things get a lot stickier when you’re in an illiquid market. 

• A great thread by Yano, who started building Blockworks during the last crypto bear market

Thanks!

Thanks for reading the latest edition of the Sporting Crypto newsletter. I’m really happy to see so many people enjoying it and sharing it with their networks. If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends who might be interested - and share it on social :)This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not financial or business advice. These are my thoughts & opinions and do not represent the opinions of any other business or entity.