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Intro Notes, Plugs & Amendments 🔌🔧

Bankruptcy, instability and general chaos in the crypto markets ensues but it’s probably settled down a little bit since this time last week, and especially the week before that.

This week I look at a really interesting project, that didn’t quite make the cut ahead of Nike launching Swoosh, their Web3 platform, in last week’s newsletter.

PSA - the last Sporting Crypto newsletter of the year will be on the 16th December and we will return in 2023 on the 6th January! 

🔌 I was featured in an article about Sport x Crypto deals on Sports

🔌 I was a guest on the CUSP show, which was really awesome! You can listen here

🔌 If you’d like to work together in a consultancy or workshop capacity, please respond to this email!

🔌 If you’d like to partner or sponsor the newsletter, email back at this address or reach out on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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This Week’s Deep Dive: ATP Launches 'Love', World's 1st Digital Art Collection Generated From In-Match Tennis Data

Art was the first real use case for NFTs that reached beyond a really niche crypto audience.

This was mostly due to the simplicity of the concept.

Traditional art is, for the most part, non-fungible. A 1/1 piece by an artist painted on a canvas, for example.

Art NFTs allowed this concept to be recreated digitally using a technology that allows for a piece of art to be actually ownable on the internet.

Despite there being a big downtrend in markets generally, especially in Tech and crypto, people still like pretty things.

One of the leading platforms for crypto art or art NFTs has been Art Blocks.

They’re a platform dedicated to bringing generative art to NFT collectors. They’ve been responsible for launching some of the most famous and successful digital art projects to date.

Art Blocks have worked in a mostly curation manner, inviting artists to create generative projects that are then curated and sold on the Art Blocks platform.

Earlier this year, Art Blocks released something called ‘Art Blocks Engine’. This is an offering from Art Blocks that allows them to collaborate with larger projects and brands, where they execute the technical Web3 side of the proposition.

This was a move from Art Blocks to broaden their audience toward the mainstream and bring art to the masses.

Enter Sports

Last week, The ATP announced the launch of LOVE, a collection of generative digital artworks created in collaboration with Art Blocks Engine and renowned artist Martin Grasser.

The artwork, which is a first-of-its-kind generative art project in Tennis, and the first sports project Art Blocks Engine has been involved in, uses actual in-match data from the ATP Tour’s finale and will be used as inputs to create a unique piece of art.

The artwork represents this data by showing a tennis ball striking a court, with vibrant colours. The art itself varies in rarity depending on how important a point is — for example, championship-winning points being extra rare.

The variables for the artwork include the ball’s location, velocity, the direction of travel and point of impact — as well as more traditional artistic variables such as colour, texture and viewpoint.

It’s the ATP’s first venture into Web3 and the collection goes on sale on Tuesday, 6 December.

Sometimes, simplicity is the way

The issue with a lot of brands activating in Web3, especially with NFTs, is that they're complex.

With this drop, ATP are dipping their toes in the water with something that on the surface is fairly simple; Art. Behind the scenes, of course, there is an immense amount of work both creatively and technically required.

Too often we see brands over-index community, participation, Discords and hype — rather than creating something people actually want to own. Many brands have fallen into the trap of looking at NFT projects and trying to copy their playbook. This is even more so the case from brand to brand, in the sense that when you see your competitors do something, you tend to try and replicate and improve it. The issue is, what most brands are replicating and improving upon is substandard. The bar is really low. 

What the ATP have done here is relatively niche and it is aimed at two audiences:

1. It plays to an audience that are 90% likely to be crypto native but also like Tennis, and are probably regular collectors of Art Blocks drops.

2. The other side of the audience is the crypto-curious affluent Tennis lover. 

There’s also an important distinction to make in a sporting sense, here.

A lot of rights holders might be looking at this project and thinking “I would love to do exactly the same thing, the artwork looks great”. 

This might work for a number of rights holders in Sports, but you have to remember that this has been geared toward Tennis. Tennis has always been seen as a classy, wealthy sport.

Wealthy people like art.

I’m simplifying things massively here, but not all strategies when it comes to Sports NFTs are transferrable in the industry.

This is a really interesting start to Art Blocks’ involvement in Sport and is a polished, cleanly executed first drop from the ATP.

They’re not onboarding millions of people here and it’s highly selective, but it will likely generate demand from the audiences they’ve targeted.

More sports crypto stories & things to put on your radar

• The Undertaker is launching NFTs and someone will have a chance to meet him as part of the drop. 

• Sorare’s World Cup Global game had 500k entrants, which is pretty impressive. 

• Five companies account for all of NBA’s crypto sponsorship dollars

• Crypto exchange KuCoin launched a report of sorts detailing interest in sports crypto assets

• Binance has invested $4m into Ultimate Champions, the free-to-play fantasy game that has a deal with the likes of Arsenal

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

• FTX owned a stake in a US-licensed bank, which is pretty crazy. There’s no end to how incredibly bewildering this story is. 

• Chimpers, a prominent NFT project, have partnered with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

• Porsche have launched their own set of NFTs

• Singapore’s largest bank completed an intraday repo trade on JP Morgan’s Onyx. Settlements like this usually take a couple of days.

Thank you!

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