22/07/2021 Sports NFTs Are Becoming a Hot Commodity

By 

Fang Block 

Sports NFT platform Sorare partnered with Goldin Auctions to offer digital trading cards of the starting 11 players on the Belgian and French national soccer teams.

Courtesy of Goldin Auction
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It seems sports fandom has been transported into the digital world.

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On Tuesday, it was reported that Lineal by Tyson Fury, a sports NFT featuring the lineage of the British professional boxer bare-knuckle brawling and boxing, sold for nearly US$1 million at auction.

Following this sale, Tom Brady’s NFT platform Autograph announced that it has signed exclusive deals with an all-star roster of athletes and partnerships with movie studio Lionsgate and online gaming company DraftKings.

NFTs are pieces of digital content recorded on blockchain, blocks that contain cryptographic information that could not be modified. NFTs as collectibles have been on the rise especially since Christie’s record US$69 million sale of an artwork by the digital artist Mike Winkelman, known as Beeple. 

In the meantime, sports NFTs, which can include digital trading cards, signed sports memorabilia, or video clips, continue to grow in popularity. Winkelman himself is a co-founder of a company that is selling NFTs that include sports memorabilia, beginning with Andy Murray’s 2013 Wimbledon victory. 

Tyson’s NFT fetched US$987,000 via an auction at HoDooi that closed last Friday, making it one of the biggest sale of sports NFTs in history. The price smashed the US$200,000 paid for NBA star LeBron James's slam dunk NFT, and the nearly US$300,000 sale of a Cristiano Ronaldo NFT, both in March. 

The 43-year-old football icon Brady co-founded Autograph this spring. On Wednesday, the company said it has signed exclusive NFT deals with current and former athletes representing sports from golf to tennis, from ice hockey to skateboarding, including Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Derek Jeter, Naomi Osaka, and Tony Hawk, who will also join the Autograph’s advisory board.

In addition, Autograph has entered into partnership with Lionsgate, the major motion picture and television studio, and DraftKings, a digital sports entertainment and gaming company. 

While Lionsgate will offer Autograph exclusive access to NFTs from an array of iconic film and television properties, such as John Wick and The Hunger Games, DraftKings will provide the online marketplace for Autograph’s sports NFTs.

“The NFT boom has reinvented the collectibles industry and driven excitement to early-adopting audiences worldwide—including the DraftKings community,” Matt Kalish, DraftKings co-founder and president, said in a statement. “This initial vision in collaboration with Autograph, and its coveted collection of official digital collectibles, is a vital first step as we enter the emergent NFT market.” 

Earlier this week, another sports NFT platform, Sorare, announced its partnership with Goldin Auctions, a leading trading cards, collectibles, and memorabilia marketplace, to offer digital trading cards of the starting 11 players on the Belgian and French national soccer teams.

In April, the Golden State Warriors launched an NFT collection commemorating their NBA championships and most notable games, making them the first professional sports franchise to release a digital collection of this kind. 

“The digital collectibles excitement is palpable,” Warriors chief revenue officer Brandon Schneider said while announcing the sale. “We see NFTs and digitization of our business as a mainstay to engage our fans around the world.”

Arts

https://www.barrons.com/articles/sports-nfts-are-becoming-a-hot-commodity-01626902423

Interesting NFTs
CryptoKitties
Good day! I'm Kitty #126901. All you need to know about me is I hate hamburgers with a passion. I put garlic butter on everything. Like, everything: hot dogs, ice cream—everything! Let's pawty!
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“Domestic is the manifestation of the cultural patriarchy in my home. The wooden "woman's" tragedy of false desire. It was done in a moment of breakup. The hollow 3d body & its lost eyes, invites you to fill up. Trying to reach out, encumbered and wrapped in its own fragility, the new mother rises."
Michael Jordan - Crown Collection
“All you needed was one little match to start that whole fire.”- Michael Jordan. In regards to both the action on the court and everything that happened off of it, Jordan provided a spark that changed the future in so many different ways throughout his tenure in Chicago, and even decades after the fact. And, in the end, he got everything that he wanted when he began his NBA journey: he turned the team and organization as a whole into a respected program, like the dynasties he looked up to as a child. Having steered the Chicago Bulls to an incredible six championship rings in eight years from 1991-1998, scooping up five MVP awards in the process, Jordan is one of just a handful of superstars who have truly transcended their sports. Jordan and Scottie Pippen’s (right) relationship both on and off the pitch was arguably the foundation of the Bulls’ incredible success. Scottie Pippen was present with Jordan for all six championships in eight seasons. Dennis Rodman (left) His relentless and smart play perfectly suited what Jordan and Jackson wanted to do to take the Bulls to greater heights. Although his exploits off the court earned him special fame, Rodman was unquestionably one of the greatest basketball players of his generation and one of the finest defensive players in the history of the game.
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LIMITED EDITION 1/1 | includes signed limited edition prints of all 3 states (pre-election, Trump win, Biden win) This piece is a first for Nifty, a token that will change based on the outcome of the election. If anything is constant about the times we now live in, it's uncertainty. This uncertainty is perfectly encapsulated in this piece of artwork as the person buying the piece will not know the final artwork. The artwork will be one state at auction before the election, and after the results of the election are known, will forever change to reflect a Trump or Biden win. PLEASE FUCKING NOTE: If trump wins, this token will change to that video of sexy boi king trump stomping through hell FOREVER. I don’t want you coming back to me bitching that you spent $2M* on this and now it’s a video of orangeman going HAM and it’s keeping u up at night popping mad boners. should have voted bruh. *and stfu that this isn’t gonna be worth a fuckton more when I hit 30 years of everydays and have a permanent collection in the MOMA. smh.