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Intro Notes & Plugs 🔌

I seem to be saying this every week, but there’s just is so much happening right now.Whether it’s sponsorships, partnerships or collaborations - it’s mad to think when I had this idea about 3 months ago there wasn’t actually too much to write about.Now there seems to be too much to write about.

Nevertheless, in this edition, I try and distil the most important stories of the week in Sporting Crypto land. For the first time, I try and approach a project with a critical lens. It’s something I’ve been keeping an eye on for a while, and by no means are the people behind it bad actors (from what I know!). For me, this felt like a learning experience on many levels from the outside in because I’ve been so interested in what it would look like for a Football club to be run as a DAO.

🔌 NYC.NFT is a big NFT conference in New York which people in the UK aren’t able to attend because it’s before US travel restrictions end. A group of people in the space who are UK based are trying to put together a London equivalent. I’ll keep updates coming in next week’s newsletter but it should be weekend 5/6th Nov.

🔌 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 :)

🔌 If you don’t know what NFTs are, this thread is for you. It’s very, very good.

Stories & projects of the week

1) -Coinbase and NBA Sign Partnership Deal- 

The Story

From the press release:

Coinbase CMO Kate Rouch said:

Crypto Sports partnerships are happening at a frightening pace, with big dollar costs attached and long commitments involved.

Coinbase at this point is the most ‘trusted’ place to buy Crypto and was publicly listed earlier in the year. They’re one of the ‘cleaner’ names in the space and compared to most exchanges they’re seen as the most legitimate and trusted in the space.

ThoughtsThis is how things go mainstream. Huge brands in one sector (Crypto) partner with another huge brand in another (Sports). Yes, Crypto companies are swimming in cash. But Coinbase do not mess about. If you are thinking this is a company that is frivolous with its cash reserves (like many Crypto projects and businesses in 2017) then think again. Just look at the companies that Coinbase ventures are invested in here. Compound, Dapper Labs, Etherscan, unlock - I could go on, this is a serious business that do not just throw money around for no reason.

The NBA have arguably been the pacesetters when it comes to NFTs.

First came Top Shots.Then came Steph Curry buying a Bored Ape and becoming a stakeholder in FTX the Crypto Exchange. Then came FTX’s partnership with the Miami Heat franchise which includes 19-year naming rights of their stadium.

Here’s an NFT…everyone?

Simple but incredibly effective. And this is how things go mainstream.

If FTX have that partnership with one franchise, I can’t imagine the type of collaborations that are at the future of this partnership. Coinbase are this space’s biggest player and the NBA are the second biggest name in American Sports and one of the biggest worldwide. We’re going to see mind-blowing things, soon. For me, this is a clear indication of how brands should be doing things in this space whether they’re crypto native or not.

Coinbase aren’t directly making money from this. But they’re sure as hell going to make money indirectly from it. They’re exposing millions a year to Crypto. They’ll soon have an NFT offering. All these pieces are aligning, and all of this is here to stay.

Big brands who arne’t crypto natives should be looking at this in the inverse. How do we harness this and run it under our marketing expenditure to create better relationships with our fans/readers/consumers? Do we have to make money from this to better our brand and increase overall revenues?Indirect money will come - think about the long term. Too many brands are rushing. Take a leaf out of Crypto native brands’ books, and look longer term. FTX inked a 19 year deal with the Miami Heat. Do you think they’re rushing things? Move fast, but only when you know what oyu’re doing.A big partnership like this should really alert you to how big this thing is going to become.

2) -KINGS.LIMITED: Buying a Soccer Team as a DAO…-

The Story

The story is fairly straightforward.

• A DAO Sells membership via NFTs

• They’re then aiming to raise enough money to buy a football/soccer team

• They then run that Soccer team in DAO form and all NFT owners have voting rights

Seems an incredibly powerful way to theoretically ensure fans have ownership over the franchises they love.

From their website, Kings.Limited:

Thoughts

Before I go into this I want to make a few things clear:

• I don’t think there are bad actors involved in this project

• I definitely think the future of governance lies in DAOs or DAO inspired Orgs

• I don’t currently think DAOs are fit for purpose for a LOT of different things

• This is simply a critical piece on this specific project and what I have learnt about their trial and error approach in public

• This project could still do really well months or years from now, nothing I say should make it seem like it is doomed to fail.

So Kings Limited are selling these NFTs at 0.09 ETH each, which at current pricing is about 360 dollars.

So if you’re selling 10,000 of these, that’s 900 ETH in total that you’re hoping to gain. 900 ETH at the time of writing is about $36 million. That’s a lot. What Soccer club are they trying to buy?!

That’s the theory, and here’s Simeon Jackson - former Norwich forward, who is part of the team behind them - tweeting about Kings.

What has actually happened?

Well…

As of about last night (24th October 2021) only 300 were sold. That’s a total of 27 ETHs worth of Kings aka ~ $110k. That’s not a small amount, but I’m unsure how many Soccer teams are buyable at that price. Pressed into action, the instigators of this project proposed that the mint be decreased to 1000 rather than 10,000 King NFTs.

That also decreases the amount of total revenue derived from the project’s total to $3.69m rather than $36.9m. Now that ~$3.69m could be used to buy a soccer franchise. But they still need to get to that. From what I can tell, they aren’t close to the 1000 threshold and worryingly, at times, communication has been sparse.

For those not fluent in Crypto a rug pull is basically when someone creates an NFT project, sells the NFTs, then runs away with the money without doing anything promised.

Personally speaking, I don’t think this is the case considering activity in the discord since and also due to former professional athletes being involved. However, this is always a risk in unregulated markets.

There’s another thing here, a huge learning for anyone thinking about launching an NFT project.In a normal organisation, not responding for a few days or a week is acceptable. In the world of Crypto and NFTs, 1 day is a week and 1 week is a month. If you can’t keep up, maybe you shouldn’t. 

To summarise, here are some of my notes that I’ll be using to take forward in any NFT projects I eventually launch (if I ever do!) or any DAO type things I’m involved in from a sports perspective in the future:

• The first-mover advantage is not the be-all and end-all. Be right, rather than be first - but still be early.

• Don’t overhype or you risk a community expecting too much

• Understand the market you’re trying to attract and be part of their culture before trying to attract culture. The Kings got pretty excited when the Sun newspaper wanted to write about the project. Little did they know (I think) that the Sun is absolutely hated by any football fan with a moral compass in the UK (at the very least).

• Do you have product-market fit? Does football actually need DAOs and how decentralised do they need to be?

• What is it that fans actually want?

• What are the barometers of success for a fan-run football club? 

• Fan run doesn’t equal well run…we only have to look at Barcelona there.

• Do fans always know best? Do I, Pet, know more than X at Arsenal about running a football club. Do Y amount of fans know more than X at Arsenal about running a football club? Collaboratively - maybe.

• What does it mean for Football to be fan-run and owned?

Crypto Deep Dive: Facebook and Reddit make their moves

2 Things here. 1) Reddit are supposedly building out an NFT marketplace: https://decrypt.co/84121/reddit-building-nft-marketplace-ethereum-token-rewards

2) Facebook plans to hire 10,000 in EU to build 'metaverse': https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-plans-hire-10000-eu-build-metaverse-2021-10-17/

The Web2 giants both came out with announcements/clues about their plans in Web3 over the last week or so.

On Reddit…

Reddit get ‘vibes’. They get culture and they’re community-driven so it’s no surprise to see where they’re going. Think about Alexis Ohanian (Co-founder Reddit) sporting his Crypto punk as a pin at various celebrity events, you wouldn’t have to be a pro punter to bet on Reddit being first movers in Web3.

Let’s summarise:

• Reddit is looking to hire a senior backend engineer to develop its own NFT platform.

• A job ad states the social media site wants to "build the largest creator economy on the internet."

• The role requires development skills but no prior experience with crypto or NFTs.

Everyone wants to build an NFT platform, and if Reddit do it well considering their communities, what transpired with Gamestop etc. - the virality, the memetics - we could see a serious, serious amount of volume on whatever they build.

On Facebook…

Zuck and FB are hated on a lot, and many would argue rightly so.What they do with our data is grim, to say the least…

that being saidThey’ve run a successful business since its inception and their earning reports are always solid.Zuck, whatever you think of him, has built a good business but also maintained one. Pretty damn well.

The issue here is, do Facebook risk becoming the bad guys in Ready player one? The monolithic, centralised entity that tries to own what intrinsically needs to be open-source, collaborative and decentralised.

Could this actually be the biggest pivot ever, though?Zuck was almost first to Social Media…are they going to be early here as well?

What does this mean for Sports?

Same as most weeks. If you’re not paying attention, the sooner you start the more set up you’ll be for the long term future of your brand and company.

If you’re buying FB ads right now for a sporting entity…it’s probably relevant.

If you work in sports marketing and partnerships, it’s definitely relevant. 

This is a change in the way we live just as Social media was when it comes to communication. Work, socialisation, ownership and more are all changing and Crypto is the backbone of this.

More big stories & things to put on your radar

• Michael Vick launches his own NFTs with SportsIcon

• McLaren launch digital collectables…they look quite cool

• Interesting…will be cool to see what the sports outcome data stuff looks like!

• This is weird to me, quite cringeworthy. Is this what fans actually want when we talk about engagement? 

• How to not drop an NFT if you’re a sports star…come on Robbo

Great reads and great tweeting

• Brands are embracing their weirdness. It’s either Crypto, or it’s Crypto culture-inspired stuff 

• Super important thread especially when trying to attract Crypto talent. You’re not going to bamboozle them with imaginary future numbers. You’re not going to fool them with future promises. If the pay is too low, they’ll tell you - because they don’t need the money. It’s a huge power shift when it comes to employee-employer relationships. You work for talent as much as they work for you. If you don’t, they’ll leave and you’ll be worse off.

• Definitely going to write about this at some point. Crypto gets a bad rep from an environmental standpoint (I think probably rightly so when it comes to proof of work chains…but then again let’s not ignore rare metal mining etc.) so it’s interesting to see things like this happening. People in Crypto love speculating. Funding of bleeding-edge innovation that helps solve the climate crisis, next-gen science research and stuff is going to be done by DAOs first in the future (I think).

• Are music NFTs going to be the next ‘thing’?

• People are scared of change, always remember that. 

• Keep an eye on ‘Worldcoin’…

• Crypto for good is not talked about enough, and I’ll make an effort to emphasise this in future editions!

• Wu-Tang just sold their one of kind album for $4m to a DAO…probably nothing?

• Marshmello buys a Crypto Punk