⚽️ Premier League players flock to OpenSea
Reece James, Trent Alexander-Arnold and John Terry join Serena Williams, Neymar and Steph Curry owning very popular NFTs.
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This week, we dive deeper into the Premier League footballers buying lucrative NFT’s as a way to diversify their already sizeable investment portfolio’s.
Last summer I shared an article which depicted the trends that will bestow sport in the UK over the coming years.
Many of them have already shown several examples of traction in the six months since I wrote that piece.
One of which is the rapidly rising presence of cryptocurrency in sport.
So far, the evidence has been largely felt at institutional level.
Many sports teams are partnering with innovative startups like Sorare or Socios where they are minting and selling their own “fan tokens” for consumption.
These tokens are built using proprietary technology often built on the Ethereum network.
Inter Milan have gone as far as forgoing shirt sponsorship this season in an attempt to promote their own fan tokens - highlighting their commitment to this growing part of their business.
On an individual level, this is being felt in one of two ways:
Athletes taking a portion of their wages/contracts in crypto currency
Athletes themselves buying lucrative NFT’s
So far there have not been many public examples of British athletes taking portions of their performance fees / signing bonuses in cryptocurrency but in the States it is completely different.
Most recently, Frances Ngannou - UFC Heavyweight Champion of the world took half of his guaranteed $600,000 purse in Bitcoin as a marketing push from a recent deal he signed with CashApp.
Athletes buying NFT’s however, is far more common.
Have you seen any celebrities changing their Twitter avatar to a colourful animated image lately? If so, it’s likely because they are owners of a popular NFT project. Odell Beckham Jr below being a prime example:
If you are unaware, the two most famous NFT projects are Cryptopunk and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Bored Ape’s are very colourful graphical images of Ape’s popularised by a raft of celebrity investors.
Marc Cuban (NBA owner), Steph Curry (NBA player), Logan Paul (YouTuber/Boxer), Shaquille O’Neal (ex-NBA player) and Neymar are all celebrity sports owners of Bored Ape’s.
Infact, Neymar got his just this week:
Not too long ago, Reece James of Chelsea did the exact same:
As NFT’s are built on the blockchain you are able to see their complete purchase history.
John Terry currently owns over 40 NFT’s in his wallet including a recent purchase of a Mutant Ape (a Board Ape offshoot) for £10.6k which you can see here.
Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold changed his profile picture to an NFT image of Muhammad Ali a couple of months ago, then changed it back a few days after.
The reason for the change was unknown but the nature of the comments Trent received from his fans at the time suggest a strong reason as to why.
There-in, lies a cultural difference in the UK. So far, mainstream adoption of blockchain ideals in the UK is far slower than our American counterparts.
The investment opportunity, is rife however.
On December 30, John Terry bought a Doodle for 4.7ETH (£8.4K) and sold it for 6.01ETH (£10.7K) just 3 days later!
That same Doodle recently had an offer rejected for 7.4ETH (13.2K) by its new owner.
Elsewhere, Steph Curry paid 55ETH or almost $180,000 (at the time) for his Bored Ape, marking a 53.5ETH ($175,000) profit for the previous owner in just three months.
Steph’s Bored Ape does not display a recent offer so we do not know what it is currently worth, but his previous owner saw a 36.6x return on investment in a very short amount of time.
Reece James, John Terry, Trent Alexander-Arnold may just be onto something!
I’ll see you next week.