[Finance] Non Fungible Tokens - NFTs

[Barry Izbak]

I have been asked to take part in some research this coming Friday about football fans' views on digital assets in sport (e.g. digital collectibles, fan tokens) and fan engagement more broadly.

I believe that the people behind Crawley Town are funding it through this sort of investment and that there are NFTs being marketed by some clubs and some individual players as investment opportunities.

I remember hearing Kieran Maguire explaining NFTs on his fabulous Price of Football Podcast - but I can't find the episode.

What does NSC know about NFTs?

What are your expectations of digital collectibles and fan tokens?

 

[chickens]

My expectation of NFTs is that there will be a lot of disappointed people out there when the servers hosting their NFTs are shut down and they discover they’ve paid a lot of money for a broken web link.

 

[Official Old Man]

Watching a TV show last night where, for the sake of the plot, these were explained as such-
Person A is a money launderer and puts up for sale an NFT of something with zero interest on behalf of Person B who has a lot of cash.
Person B buys the NFT for £millions but using untraceable crypto currency which Person A transfers into declared currency for Person B.

 

[MattBackHome]

 

[beorhthelm]

avoid as an investment. might be fun as a hobby, part of following your club. they will be pushed by clubs as a source of revenue and some will like to collect things, but there's no real call for people to vote for trivial club activities as some propose.

 

[Springal]

NFTs as a term is not really accurate, as an NFT is really just a kind of online ledger. The negative connotations come from the investments in ‘images’ and football related tat which should be avoided.

 

[A1X]

If it looks like a con and smells like a con...

 

[Happy Exile]

I know a bit about them, personally have no interest but can see how they will very possibly take off through sports and football. As a simple example, tickets for games held in an NFT wallet (all technology that already exists) become unique collectables with resale value in the same way paper tickets of the past were.

One area of value for a club comes in offering different NFTs for different games - a pre-season friendly that only attracts 8,000 fans normally might now attract 20,000 if every ticket comes with a Mitoma collectable NFT with potential high resale value, or just from people that want to collect a set by going to every game in a season. Now tie that in with something like FIFA - go to a game and get a Mitoma NFT that boosts his speed in a game by X points and again the use cases grow...NFTs support the original creators also getting revenue from the secondary market. I don't play FIFA, I sell my Mitoma-boost NFT for £10 on the NFT marketplace and the club could get a % of that too.

There's a lot of stuff about films too - download a film on Prime or Sky and you don't own it once your subscription ends. An NFT would mean you could continue owning it because it'd be a unique copy assigned to you, and you could re-sell it too, recreating the secondary market of physical DVDs. The film industry will love this because an NFT would also support them getting some of the revenue from that ongoing sale.

I'm not far off 50 and see no appeal at all to it for me. I don't doubt for a second the market is there though. There's around a billion USD a month in sales already and most of us don't even have any exposure to them yet. Characters in Fortnite that anyone can create and sell without losing control of it and finding it copied everywhere, skins for games, music - there's a lot that's going to be changed by NFTs over the next few years.

 

[Lenny Rider]

I have been asked to take part in some research this coming Friday about football fans' views on digital assets in sport (e.g. digital collectibles, fan tokens) and fan engagement more broadly.

I believe that the people behind Crawley Town are funding it through this sort of investment and that there are NFTs being marketed by some clubs and some individual players as investment opportunities.

I remember hearing Kieran Maguire explaining NFTs on his fabulous Price of Football Podcast - but I can't find the episode.

What does NSC know about NFTs?

What are your expectations of digital collectibles and fan tokens?

Apparently (allegedly) the regime at Crawley are footballs answer to the ‘Emperors New Clothes’ , it will go tits up at some point, with The Reds dropping so quickly it won’t be that long before they are getting excited about the Boxing Day clash with Horsham YMCA.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Potatoes, onions? What a palava.

 

[beorhthelm]

I know a bit about them, personally have no interest but can see how they will very possibly take off through sports and football. As a simple example, tickets for games held in an NFT wallet (all technology that already exists) become unique collectables with resale value in the same way paper tickets of the past were.

One area of value for a club comes in offering different NFTs for different games - a pre-season friendly that only attracts 8,000 fans normally might now attract 20,000 if every ticket comes with a Mitoma collectable NFT with potential high resale value, or just from people that want to collect a set by going to every game in a season. Now tie that in with something like FIFA - go to a game and get a Mitoma NFT that boosts his speed in a game by X points and again the use cases grow...NFTs support the original creators also getting revenue from the secondary market. I don't play FIFA, I sell my Mitoma-boost NFT for £10 on the NFT marketplace and the club could get a % of that too.

There's a lot of stuff about films too - download a film on Prime or Sky and you don't own it once your subscription ends. An NFT would mean you could continue owning it because it'd be a unique copy assigned to you, and you could re-sell it too, recreating the secondary market of physical DVDs. The film industry will love this because an NFT would also support them getting some of the revenue from that ongoing sale.

I'm not far off 50 and see no appeal at all to it for me. I don't doubt for a second the market is there though. There's around a billion USD a month in sales already and most of us don't even have any exposure to them yet. Characters in Fortnite that anyone can create and sell without losing control of it and finding it copied everywhere, skins for games, music - there's a lot that's going to be changed by NFTs over the next few years.

great examples of NFT potential. most will end up worth pennies and in many cases the existing technology will not need changing to a blockchain. football tickets for instance (which are logically an NFT without a blockchain), see no need to change from current systems, though might if the software provider goes that route.

 

[Brian Fantana]

NFTs as a proof of ownership of an expensive physical item (such as a car, watch etc) will probably have interesting applications in the insurance industry, but IMO it is absolute nonsense as stand-alone digital 'collectibles'.

 

[pb21]

If any one is wondering what NFTs are and how they could work here is a video of Trump explaining his excellent range of Trump NFTs to his fans.

 

[Sarisbury Seagull]

AVOID!

 

[Algernon]

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

Fan tokens are already being used by some of the biggest sporting clubs in the world.

World’s Most Valuable Sports Teams 2021

The pandemic has caused a world of chaos for the sports industry, but billionaire owners are thriving, with the average value of the world’s top teams jumping 11%, to $3.4 billion.

www.forbes.com

Using this list nine out of the top ten most valuable sporting clubs in the world have a partnership with Socios who deals in sports tokens.

The top two teams in the PL at present also have a partnership with Socios.

So Crawley are hardly worth mentioning when you can look at some of the biggest football clubs in the world being involved in it.

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

An NFT allows sports people or artists to profit from their own works or images.

In time it will be no different to when a musical artist sells their catalogue which allows someone else to then claim ownership of that music and do be able to go after anyone legally for using that music without their consent. All royalties will go to the owner of the catalogue.

Same will happen with NFTs.

If someone buys an NFT and others then try to distribute it for profit they will get sued or shut down via copyright protections in the law.

Easy enough to prove who owns the real thing.

 

[AK74]

Here's one heartwarming NFT-related development from the wonderful world of football:

John Terry's NFT project plummets in value by 99 per cent since launch

John Terry's infamous NFT project has plummeted in value by 99 per cent since it was first launched back in February of this year.

www.joe.co.uk

 

[chickens]

Anyone looking into NFTs as a lasting investment need to be aware that they’re walking into a completely unregulated Wild West.

Get familiar with the term “rug pull” and read a couple of cautionary tales like these (all from within the last few weeks)

€1.5 million stolen in celeb-backed French NFT rug pull that promised to make a movie called Plush

Around 770 people were convinced to spend a combined almost €1.5 million (~$1.66 million) on NFTs of teddy bears, which sold for around €1,250 each (~$1,380). Buyers were told they would become "co-producers" of the Plush animated film, which would star Kev Adams and other French comedians as...

web3isgoinggreat.com

Co-founders of company best known for Bella Hadid NFTs begin $77 million court battle against each other

Krzysztof Gagacki and Edmond Truong are co-founders of Rebase.gg, some sort of augmented reality app where people go hunting for NFTs. They're best known for helping to create a "Cy-B3lla" NFT collection with model Bella Hadid, which launched in mid-2022. Speaking about skepticism of celebrity...

web3isgoinggreat.com

Just because your favourite scheleb is involved, doesn’t mean it isn’t a good old-fashioned fraud.

and because when they launched there was lots of talk about how NFTs would support the artist:

Goblintown NFT images all changed to an illustrated middle finger in protest about royalties

There has been an ongoing controversy in the NFT world over creator royalties. Although NFTs are often talked up as being good for artists because they enable royalties to be paid even after the initial sale, these payments are rarely enforced by the smart contract and are instead up to...

web3isgoinggreat.com

 

[HeaviestTed]

The original idea behind NFT’s was to make sure content creators were paid for their work - a worthy thing.

NFT’s have been taken over by people who use them for money laundering, there is no financial reason to buy something for any sum of money that doesn’t actually exist.

NFT’s should absolutely be avoided by football clubs, it is bad enough the amount of gambling adverts. The government should step in here and say no.