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Intro Notes, Plugs & Amendments 🔌🔧

I’m just back from holiday in Barcelona, so bear with me.

If today’s newsletter isn’t up to scratch, you know why.

In today’s edition, I take a look at a legacy player. A product of the dot com boom, looking closely at where NFTs, in particular, are headed.

eBay. A company perhaps resuscitated by the Covid-19 pandemic as many people had spare cash or needed a new hobby.

Are they too late to the hype or is there something here?

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🔌 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!

This Week’s Deep Dive: eBay Skate to where the puck is going

eBay have made their first foray into NFTs by launching Wayne Gretzky collectibles, starting as low as $10 for their ‘Green’ tier, ensuring affordability for the everyday fan.

They’ve partnered with OneOf, who help lifestyle and sports brands drop NFTs - as well as having their own marketplace for resale purposes.

Dawn Block, vice president of collectibles, electronics at eBay had this to say: 

Buyers were able to purchase in fiat and were then taken to a landing page to mint the NFT for free. Which is an interesting way to drop something that is aimed primarily at a userbase who aren’t crypto native.

Usually, PR fluff like this doesn’t necessarily hit hard. But eBay might have a big opportunity here.

Let’s examine why.

Firstly, eBay have 150 million users. 

That’s 120 million more than the 30 million MetaMask boasts.

That’s 150 times the amount of active wallets there are on Opensea as of January 2022, many of which we know are duplicates, so the true number of unique users is far fewer.

The scale here is still large and that should not be underestimated.

Whilst there’s a massive gulf in how ‘savvy’ eBay are as a company when it comes to anything crypto compared to their web3 counterparts, 150 million people…is a lot of people.

As you can see, eBay’s stock price has been fairly stagnant as of 2013.

In fact, it took until 2015 for it to reach previous all time highs from 2005.

There have been stock splits, of course, in fact, that was probably the driver of the 2005 all-time highs.

However, this is a big brand and a big name, and it’s safe to say that they haven’t set the world on fire over the last 15 years.

An internet powerhouse turned peer-2-peer marketplace dominated by resellers and wholesale buyers. It’s not a fall from grace by any means. But not exactly what many would have predicted 20 years ago.

Then, Covid-19 happened. 

Suddenly, people had more time on their hands and the lucky had more money.

One area that is of specific interest here, is sports memorabilia, for obvious reasons.

2020 saw the trading card category on eBay increase by 142%.

There were 4 million more cards sold on eBay in 2020 compared to 2019.

All of a sudden, eBay became the place to go for people to trade memorabilia during this period. 

So to summarise, so far: 

1. eBay have a huge scale not matched by many, and not matched by anyone in crypto 

2. eBay are no longer a tech giant, but their scale definitely is

3. Collectibles boomed during the pandemic and haven’t really slowed down too much since. eBay have become a big part of why people are looking very seriously at memorabilia as an asset class. 

So why NFTs?

A two-parter for eBay, the first of which is more light touch and they’re already doing.

The second of which, if they’re not, they should be thinking about.

1. Try and make money from selling digital collectibles to your 150m person audience. Find an agency to help you with this and get some rights that people care about (Wayne Gretzky)

2. Authentication of physical collectibles by digital means (NFTs)

(1) is self-explanatory. Feed the demand for NFTs with your large scale and try to profit from it.

(2) is more untapped, and probably more interesting. 

Why?

Physical collectibles have one big issue: they’re physical

Forgery, scams, wear and tear, theft and breakage during transport are norms in this industry.

So can NFTs do anything here to help?

Sillytuna puts it perfectly here.

If there’s a way to register NFTs that prove ownership of physical items (which many, many people are doing right now including the likes of Genuino and many more in fashion) where the NFT is ‘registered’ independent of any single entity, then you can essentially stop the fraud and scam problems that exist in sports memorabilia pretty easily.

In fact, the wear and tear and theft side of things could also be stopped, to some extent.

This would require some centralised help, of course, in the form of vaults - but imagine I buy the NFT that proves I own an NFL Super Bowl football. That doesn’t necessarily need to be transported, the blockchain just shows I now own it. We’re moving ownership on a decentralised ledger, without moving the item.

If I want to claim it, perhaps I need to go to a storage facility, prove ownership via the NFT, claim the football, and burn the NFT.

This stuff might seem quite alien now, but there is ample opportunity here for the right company to massively disrupt the supply chain of physical memorabilia, and the way it’s traded.

eBay might not be spring chickens, but if they can find a way to innovate both by facilitating the sales of NFTs and also impact physical collectibles using web3 technology - they could really impact the future of both industries - digital and physical.

More sports crypto stories & things to put your radar

• LinksDAO announce a big partnership with Callaway Golf

• As mentioned in the intro of last week’s newsletter - it looks like DraftKings are really getting their web3 strategy in place.

• Former NBA star Paul Piecer has been named in a lawsuit along with Floyd Mayweather Junior regarding a crypto scam. It’s 2018 all over again.

• This might be next week’s deep dive depending on the news…games are really hard to make. I’m curious to see how licensed, web3 games (that aren’t fantasy) work. We’ve seen how bad this went down with F1 delta time.

• Stepn, who you can read about here, have hit $3-5m daily revenues recently, is a truly remarkable story. Whether it’s sustainable or not, time will tell, but the experiment could lead to incredible things to come in the future.

• Magic Johnson & NBA Top Shot team up to create digital collectable moments of his best career plays.

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

• Cheaper NFTs will be the next ‘thing’ and I’ve thought this for a long time

• NFT creators - try hard not to water down your brand

• Free mints or free NFTs could well be the next trend in this micro-economy

• A16Z launched a $4.5 billion fund…thier 4th

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.