Opportunities and pitfalls at the first NFT World Cup
By Josh Skinner
The FIFA World Cup is the pinnacle of football and the most popular sporting event on the planet.?
According to FIFA, 3.572 billion people watched the matches in 2018 - around half of the world’s population.?
The past four years has seen many changes in society with the pandemic accelerating our digital activities.?
The blockchain - a concept known to only a few in 2018 - is now part of the lexicon of our daily lives, with crypto exchanges, fan tokens and NFTs ((Non-Fungible Tokens) more prevalent in the sports marketing landscape.?
But this has not come without challenges.?
Earlier this month, FTX - a crypto currency trading platform that was previously one of largest in the world, collapsed leading to a rival, Binance announcing plans to acquire it before pulling out.
FTX had a number of lucrative sports partnerships including Miami Heat, Mercedes-Petronas F1 team and Major League Baseball, all of whom have had to deal with the aftermath of their meltdown.?
It highlighted the volatility of what is largely an unregulated sector and the important steps that sporting bodies and brands must take before promoting crypto products and platforms to fans.?
Nevertheless, we are now just days away from the first World Cup in the web3 era with a number of stakeholders delving into the space to capitalise on this new marketplace.?
This has largely manifested as NFT offerings.?
A Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is a unique, digital asset often in the form of a piece of art, design, video clip or music.
The ‘Non-Fungible’ element is what differentiates it from cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin - as every NFT is unique and has a digital signature that makes it impossible to be exchanged for or equal to another.
In the context of sport, the best NFT activations communicate their benefits clearly to fans, put the utility and needs of the fan at the centre of them and a create a low barrier to entry to offset the risk.?
Here’s my selection and initial assessment on some of the more notable and interesting NFT activations related to the tournament.?
?The official FIFA NFT collection gives football fans the chance to own and trade some of the most memorable ‘moments in time’ from the World Cup down the years. With famous goals from Maradona to Gazza, they are all available to go straight into your digital wallet. This is the footballing equivalent to NBA Top Shots, an NFT project, generally regarded as successful.?
One of the main issues surrounding Blockhain is the energy consumption and environmental impact of crypto mining, hence why FIFA have partnered with Algorand which bills itself as a ‘The Green Blockchain.’
However, Algorand, with approximately 76K daily active users is less established than the most popular blockchain - Ethereum which has more than 420K.?
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While this is a positive move for FIFA, and in a many ways a ‘no brainer’ given the richness of their archive, we will have to see if partnering with a lesser used blockchain as opposed to Ethereum or even Solana will pay off.?
?The initial NFT boom has made way for a cautious market place and flattening values.?You could also argue that by imitating the NBA Top Shots model, FIFA have missed a trick and might have considered offerings NFT holders with further utility and function beyond the collectible aspect.?
As of writing this, Pooky is yet to launch and it’s making the FIFA World Cup it’s working Beta mode.?
It’s been described as ‘The world’s first predict-to-earn NFT/ digital collectible game’.?
Built on the Polygon blockchain, players use digital collectable ‘Matchballs’ to predict the results of football matches from the world’s biggest leagues. Similar to Fantasy Football, but you predict on teams and not players. You can choose a home win, away win or draw. You can predict a low scoring game or a high one.?
For their opening gambit, the World Cup is a great test and learn. With the ability to create your own tournaments and leaderboards, it is being promoted as something to be enjoyed with groups of friends or work colleagues as an extra layer of entertainment whilst watching the games.
This is the type of project that I believe can turn heads. NFTs with utility, a first of its kind and built on a blockchain that’s going places and it’s free to play. It’s a new and interesting take on the world of sports betting in the Web3 space, this is a project I’m going to be keeping an eye on whilst participating in at the same time.?
World Cup partners Budweiser are no strangers to the world of NFTs having previously launched collectibles around iconic can designs and Budweiser Royalty - an NFT programme giving music fans a chance to support up and coming artists.?
This time around they are giving football supporters the chance to own an NFT that provides the owner with physical benefits.?
The ‘Scorecard’ NFT will be linked to the live event and will auto-update during the match.?
Purchasing this NFT will give the owner an exclusive Budweiser football merch kit (which includes a scarf, metallic cup and trading card), access to an exclusive Discord channel which will be active throughout the tournament and access to a mini-penalty kick game.?
Additionally, each NFT owner will be entered into the a competition for a chance to go to the World Cup itself. The NFT itself went on sale in October for the price of $100 USD, which is a fairly reasonable price compared to other activations.?
As a brand that always goes big, Budweiser are blazing a trail with their NFT projects and movement in the Web3 space. I love the fact that purchasing an NFT comes with physical benefits and exclusivity. However, I think this idea could have gone much further than it has, utilising some of the assets they get as part of their World Cup partnership - for example, perhaps the NFT could be updated with replays of the goals from the game, or a short highlights package.?
One of FIFA’s tier 1 partners, Visa, recently joined forces with?Crypto.com?to launch a unique hybrid experience, consisting of?a pre-event NFT auction (completed) and immersive fan experience in Doha. The NFTs themselves are inspired by five goals from tournaments of the past featuring Tim Cahill, Carli Lloyd, Jared Borgetti, Michael Owen and Maxi Rodriguez. They were designed using an algorithm which transformed players’ iconic movements into dynamic works of art.??
Visitors to the FIFA Fan Festival in Doha will have the opportunity to become artists themselves as they turn their movements on the pitch into works of algorithmic art. More significantly, all proceeds from the NFT auction will be going to Street Child United, an organisation using the power of sport to change negative perception and treatment of street children worldwide.?
I believe this project is coming from a good place, diverting all proceeds to charity is commendable and the generative art is an interesting use of the technology. However, I feel this takes an abstract mind to enjoy it. On top of this, there are only five available to purchase, so a very limited but exclusive club.?