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Intro Notes, Plugs & Amendments 🔌🔧

Last week was large. I was at NFTs LDN this weekend just gone and I also went to the inaugural NFTs UK meetup! My absolute main takeaway: This Crypto thing is most definitely sticking around.When you meet the calibre of individuals working on things in this space, and also the calibre of people snooping around on the sidelines - you’ll realise how big this thing is. I genuinely had a sense of awe and amazement as I stepped into both of these events. I can only compare it to going to my first ever football match as a child and just taking things in. I can’t really explain the feeling but the energy is just unrivalled. Nothing I’ve experienced professionally really compares to it (small caveat that I am 25 so there isn’t actually that much to compare to).

🔌 It was fantastic meeting so many people (and some Sporting Crypto readers, amazingly!) in the NFT space this weekend. I hosted a talk on Sports x NFTs with some outstanding guests

🔌 I went to the inaugural NFTUK meet up last week which was also great! Definitely give them a follow if you’re UK based :)

🔌 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. If you’d like to have a conversation more generally, you can also reach out there. I’ve had a few people reach out but I’ll only accept those who I genuinely think will be cool and interesting to my readers :)

Stories & projects of the week

1) -EA calls NFT and Blockchain games ‘the future of our industry’-

The reason I started this newsletter is that Sports are at the epicentre of so many industries that are being disrupted.

If we think about fan engagement, ticketing, merchandise, fantasy, gaming and so much more - Sports are at the centre of all of this. Sports are going to bring the next wave of people to NFTs and more broadly, Crypto.

A couple of editions ago I wrote about how Steam was banning blockchain games whilst Epic games on the other hand were open to the idea of NFTs playing a big part in the future of gaming. Last week, the EA CEO Andrew Wilson called NFTs and “play-to-earn” games the “future of our industry,” but added that “it’s still early to figure out how that’s going to work,” 

Here’s more of what Andrew had to say:

3 weeks ago or so EA posted a job ad that listed NFTs and blockchain in their ‘challenge ahead’ section.

This isn’t to say EA are going all in, but it’s important to know how big a deal it is for a company of this size in the gaming industry to be taking this seriously.

And it’s important to Sports because of FIFA the game.

FIFA is a huge part of Soccer (*washes mouth out*) in the digital age. If you’re my age or a bit older and, then you’ve grown up playing FIFA games on the console of your choice since 1993. I vividly remember having FIFA games on PSP, Playstation 2 and 3, Xbox and Nintendo Wii. The one constant was the connection I had in a digital sense with the game.

To be honest, up until now - in terms of growth and innovation FIFA have done pretty great things. They’ve taken a one form game and created a sub-game in FIFA Ultimate Team which now drives almost $2bn of revenue yearly to the business.

I’m not a gaming expert but we’ve gone from:

• Offline, hardware-based ‘story/career’ based games

• Multiplayer

• Online gaming when the pesky web got quick enough

• Mobile gaming

• Then for FIFA, came FUT (Fifa Ultimate Team)

• Free-to-play games like Fortnite

So FIFA, through EA, has gone through big changes and cycles in the history of gaming. But maybe they’re now a bit behind the curve when it comes to innovation.

And to be honest with you, I’m not surprised. With COVID-19 hitting, the demand for games and gaming related products and services went ballistic. So you can probably forgive EA for not having an innovation lab, or a team of analysts looking at Axie Infinity’s every move and seeing what inspiration they can take from it.

They also had their best every year, with record revenues and sales grossing roughly $5.63bn in 2021.

Here comes the but.

That sounds like a lot, but Axie Infinity was launched in 2018, has done almost $200m in revenue over the last 30 days and boasts almost 2m active users. The Play-2-earn giant are pioneers in the world of modern gaming.

No doubt when EA’s board members see numbers like that, they’re impossible to ignore. It’s hard not to sit up and take notice of something quite nascent - which isn’t eating your lunch yet - but is definitely getting hungrier every week that goes by. And the thing about gaming is that good games take time to make. There’s never going to be a situation where you design and ship a game with an entire tokenised micro-economy within a few months like you’d do a purely collectable NFT.

But people are building. The games that come out over the next 3-5 years are going to blow your socks off.

Let’s get back to EA and FIFA. What would you actually do if you were in their shoes? There are big complications in simply shifting your entire business model to something NFT/Play-2-earn based. This is why every single big brand in the world should be making small bets in this space.

EA should take the exact same principles used when first creating FIFA Ultimate Team. 

A side game. An add on. The MVP complements the original game. Fast forward 10 years and it’s one of the only reasons people buy FIFA the game.

Could FIFA create an NFT based side game that compliments FUT?

What could they do that starts small but could end up superseding the rest of the model?

I’m guessing they’re having all of these conversations internally right now.

If I was them, I’d probably:

• Create a small game involving footballers/clubs or something as NFTs

• Create grants for developers and opensource the entire game, so that they can build games which these NFTs can be used on to

• Allow for other football-based NFT products to have some sort of utility within their ecosystem (think Sorare, and whatever else comes after them over the next years in the football x NFT space) 

Alternatively, they could build off of something else… maybe a Sports equivalent of Loot?

Crypto Deep Dive: Tarantino does NFTs

So brands (and people that are brands) are doing NFTs, seemingly every week.

This time around, it’s legendary film director Quentin Tarantino. According to the Twitter account @TarantinoNFTs, he is going to be selling:"Handwritten source documents for Best Original Screenplay at the 67 Academy Award - Pulp Fiction.”

If you haven’t wrapped your head around what the Tarantino NFT collection is going to be, then below is a section of their FAQs.

Whatever it turns out to be, successful or unsuccessful - I’m intrigued by it.

The reason is simple. This is experimentation in public. 

In 5 years time, we’re going to be saying one of two things:

1. “Omg, do you remember when Tarantino did his NFTs? That was actually wild - why the hell did he do that?”

2. “I can’t believe Tarantino was the first person to do this, what a genius move” 

It’s very difficult to say right now what types of digital items will accrue the most value in years to come.

It might be an amazing idea to have never before seen creativity, and an extension of one of the most brilliant minds to grace film, immortalised on a blockchain.

It might also be seen as meaningless, cringeworthy and pretty basic by a lot of people in the NFT space and his cult following combined.

But seriously Pet, what relevance do Sports & Crypto have with Tarantino?

Sports stars, clubs and leagues are trying to do NFT drops.All around the world.

In all different types of ways. With totally different intentions. My word of warning is that Sports fans and people in the NFT space have one thing in common:They are hypersensitive to authenticity.If you’re trying to make money, think harder about why? Why should your fans or consumers buy this? Why should you make money off this? What value are you creating? Is it worth diminishing the loyalty people have for your brand?

Food (a lot of it) for thought.

More big stories & things to put on your radar

• Nike are diving into the Metaverse…probably nothing

• Footium are up to something 

• This is actually bonkers haha

• Tyrese Haliburton had a bored ape on his sneakers…blue-chip NFT brands are modern-day Supreme combined with a digital Soho house like community

• This is really interesting from FTX…I actually think this is their best sponsorship to date in the sports space. I may go deeper on it at some point in the future!They are actually so dominant in the sports sponsorship/partnership space right now…

Great reads, great tweeting and more general ‘stuff’

• I firmly believe that Discord are going to be one of the biggest Web2 to Web3 bridges

• My friend Simon has basically given away £100k’s worth of free consulting in this thread. 

• Burger King tweeting about Crypto - cool…I guess?

• This is actually gargantuan…Reddit are the elders when it comes to Memetics, virality and community. They are going to make it in WEB3. 

• Punk 6529 has the best threads in Crypto right now 

• Talent right now doesn’t care about options…this is the reality of Web3

• V interesting by Epic games. Very original as well! 

Thanks!

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