New York, Jan. 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In less than a year NFT’s have made their presence felt in the sports, art, and music world. NBA’s Top Shot initiative that involved creating NFTs (non-fungible tokens) based on short video clips of the matches had already raked in $550m by May last year as fans bought and traded those NFTs using cryptocurrencies (as of now, NFTs can be traded via cryptocurrencies only). There were, in fact, reports that English Premier League was considering launching a similar sort of venture with a view to increase revenues both for the League and the participating clubs.
There were a few other examples as well. These include the success of Sorare (an Etherum-powered French tech start-up) in closing a rights deal with La Liga that allowed the company to use images of popular league players in FIFA video game series as well as in sticker or card forms. Then, there were the major European football clubs such as AC Milan, FC Barcelona, Manchester City, etc. issuing finite number of NFTs (of different types) that fans could buy through the fan token platform Socios (based on the Chiliz blockchain currency, $CHZ, and its accompanying infrastructure). Reportedly, AC Milan in a matter of few hours logged more than $6m in (digital) revenues using these tokens.
Then, back in June last year, there was the announcement by New Yorker Al Tylis (an NFT enthusiast and a major shareholder in the Club Necaxa of Liga MX, the Mexican Soccer League) according to which the club was ready to auction a 1% ownership stake via NFTs. This started a trend that is accelerating with WAGMI Uniteds announcement.
Ownership of a Club Using NFTs?
Now, it’s one thing to look for digital revenue channels to boost the incomes of a club; it’s a different ballgame altogether to gain full ownership of a major club using NFTs and cryptocurrencies alone! However, the latter can soon enough translate into reality with the exclusively crypto-backed organization WAGMI United’s offer to buy Bradford City AFC, a club currently playing at English Football League—the second tier of English football. The deal is yet to be finalized, but if WAGMI can have its way in this, it will surely be regarded as a watershed moment as far as NFTs and crypto influence on the world of sports is concerned.
WAGMI, in fact, has grand plans to make club ownership more democratic through broadening the club’s fan base using the power of the NFTs and the organization is chiefly counting on the prominent NFT advocate Gary Vaynerchuk for this purpose. Vaynerchuk (more well-known as Gary Vee among crypto enthusiasts) also happens to be one of a group of prominent investors for the WAGMI’s proposed deal. And so is Daryl Morey, of the Philadelphia 76ers fame and the club (again, if and when the ownership is transferred) will take over the front-office duty for the club and will be in charge of tactical and personnel decisions.
Al Tylis and Liga MX
Al Tylis launch of an NFT for Necaxa’s 1% ownership stake was successful and the 1% stake was transferred to the buyer for the price of about $1.3 million.
Now, when asked why he decided to include NFT in the transaction, Tylis’ answer was that he saw NFTs as a new and unique opportunity to generate interest in a club. More importantly, he maintained that when you tie NFTs to actual ownership, the NFTs themselves change in nature and become something else than mere social currency of the traditional NFTs.
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