11/10/2022 NFTs transform how fans bet on upcoming sports stars

A fan-centric Web3 sports platform uses NFTs to bring a new level of connectivity and ownership to betting on the success of upcoming athletes.

NFTs transform how fans bet on upcoming sports stars

A fan-centric Web3 sports platform uses NFTs to bring a new level of connectivity and ownership to betting on the success of upcoming athletes.

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs)and the sports world are on a mutually beneficial trajectory into the next generation of connectivity.

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The latter is acatalyst for more mainstream adoption, with average sports fans rushing to collect NFT memorabilia and Web3-backed event tickets. While NFTs give the industry never-before-experienced levels of democracy and the connectivity that fans crave.

The platform FANtium is using NFTs to take financing athletes to the next level. Fans can use digital assets like bets on the future success of their favorite up-and-coming sports stars.

However, instead of placing a bet and walking away with only a monetary reward, NFTs allow fans to connect with athletes and have recurring rewards based on their success.

On Oct. 11, the platform closed a funding round backed by prominent figures in both the Web3 and sports worlds, such as Sebastian Borget, co-founder and chief operation officer of the Sandbox metaverse, and professional Austrian tennis player Dominic Thiem.

Cointelegraph spoke with Jonathan Ludwig, CEO and founder of FANtium, to understand how athlete success can be fractionalized and democratized through Web3 technologies.

Ludwig emphasized that NFTs aren’t just about sports collectibles in this case:

“It’s about participating in an athlete’s community and career in a way that’s never been done before.”

According to the CEO, blockchain technology takes away any “intermediaries between the fans and the athlete” when it comes to their financing and the rewards of their success.

Related:Critics can’t stop NFTs from becoming a mainstay of daily life

Though success is sometimes hard to quantify, NFTs can create a fixed share in the earnings, therefore, the success of an athlete. This is typically connected to prize money won by an athlete but can also be sponsorship income.

Ludwig explains that the FANtium model includes historical data of all athletes in that sport to ensure that:

“Sports fans have an attractive return on investment and athletes have an enticing alternative to finance their career.”

While Web3 initiatives in the sports industry have often favored major sports stars like theNFL’s star quarterback Tom Bradywho released an NFT collection with ESPN or big-leagueteams such as the Houston Texans, Ludwig argues that the success of up-and-coming talents should also be valued.

“Established professional athletes are already earning enough money to cover their running costs,” he says. They can also use proceeds to “make valuable special investments in their career.”

However, for the sports stars of the future they can use these NFT-like bets to further their career:

“Young up-and-coming talents, on the other hand, need the capital to kick start their career, and make it to the top.”

Ludwig says this includes both collegiate and youth athletes.

Recently, in the world of professional sports, the league Karate Combat announced its plan to launch a fan-powered decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) forathlete governance within the league.

The sports metaverse startupLootMogul also recently secured $200 millionin funding to boost the development of a gaming-focused metaverse.

Arts

https://cointelegraph.com/news/nfts-transform-how-fans-bet-on-upcoming-sports-stars

Interesting NFTs
Alex in Wonderland
A figure, Alex, stands mostly naked in the midst of a physical and psychological maelstrom. He is clad only in nostalgic 80’s era socks, on a tenuous island between active waters and a variety of shark denizens. Sharks on the right side of the image are all beached, including a shark with a quartz crystal snout, an orange shark wrapped in a life buoy, and a shark further in the distance wearing an 80’s style shirt with the number “88”. On the left side is the largest shark, wearing bright glossy red lipstick and brandishing prominent teeth with braces. She is cordoned off from the figure by a roped float divider, and within her thought bubble is a warning symbol. Behind the figure, hovering in the air, are Grey aliens emerging from the distance, out of a series of elliptical UFO shaped interdimensional membranes. The Greys take on the visual form of spermazoa ostensibly impregnating the interdimensional thresholds. As is typical, these Greys inhabit a zone just behind the unconscious topology of Alex’s dissociative mind. Though Alex’s bottom half is representative, his top half mutates into a psychological cornucopia. In a manner akin to “Auto-Erotic Sphinx”, a predecessor work, the figure has self suctioned—an act of sensual infatuation, enjoyment, and exploration. Upward exists the figure’s primary conscious eye, adorned with a revolutionary beret emblazoned with a Bitcoin badge. The figure’s summit features the nose of a fighter jet facing off against video game Bullet Bills, one of whom is marked by a communist North Korean star. A cropped section of a UFO observes the contest. Alex’s mind branches both left and right. To the left is more singular embodied consciousness, manifesting two eyes and a Ganesh trunk grasping crayons. The right branch dissociates upward diagonally, emerging into an array of eyes, faces, teeth, tail, a unicorn horn, and much more—all of which participate in expressing his unconscious being; a democracy of psychic factions representing thought impressions and associations. All illumination and darkness– fernal, infernal, high consciousness and corporeal underbelly–reside in this realm. In the distance are relatively languid, light clouds, and against the firmament hovers a colossal distant eye peering over the scene and far beyond. This painting possesses underlying genetic traits with previous works such as “Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys”, “Dionysus”, and “Fuku-Shiva”. The work serves also as a nod to an earlier period of art inspiration during late teens and early twenties— born out of the nakedness, vulnerability, curiosity, and wonder inherent to coming of age and all subsequent psychedelic revelation.
Bored Ape Yacht Club #3749
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 unique Bored Ape NFTs— unique digital collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain. Your Bored Ape doubles as your Yacht Club membership card, and grants access to members-only benefits, the first of which is access to THE BATHROOM, a collaborative graffiti board. Future areas and perks can be unlocked by the community through roadmap activation.
#85278
By OthersideDeployer
CryptoPunk #9373
The CryptoPunks are 10,000 uniquely generated characters. No two are exactly alike, and each one of them can be officially owned by a single person on the Ethereum blockchain. Originally, they could be claimed for free by anybody with an Ethereum wallet, but all 10,000 were quickly claimed. Now they must be purchased from someone via the marketplace that's also embedded in the blockchain.
Fuku-Shiva
The term “Fuku” refers to fortune or good luck. “Shiva” refers to the Hindu deity who represents strongly polar qualities, both severe and delicate. On a beach inspired by adventures on Phi Phi island in Thailand, three youths cavort. Two are representational figures and the third is psychologically rendered. A dynamic relationship ensues between the triad; a reciprocity of active and passive states. The boy on the right engages in maneuvers of evasion, defense, and is dressed in a speedo which reiterates the colors and symbolism of the caution tape on the left and upper right frame of the composition. In concurrent reaction the psychedelic figure shoots out a rocket powered paper airplane. The nude boy seated in the froth and sand approaches in passive repose, and is met with active attention but equal physical reserve by the psychedelic being. Perhaps the most naked figure is also the least representational. Looming large, dynamic, and active, it engages its companions playfully. Various symbols interject into the otherwise naturalistic scene, most notably a beach ball and two contaminated barrels nested in the sand. The upright barrel reads “FukuShima” in Kanji. The barrel laying down reads “Dharma”. To the left the scene is bounded by caution tape, reiterating the danger of the nuclear waste while also hosting alien archetypes, whose presence, as is the nature of these entities, runs up and just behind the consciousness of the psychedelic figure’s eggshell-like skull.