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Giannis Antetokounmpo x Fortnite: What to expect from NBA star’s metaverse debut
Argentine football’s metaverse deal, cycling’s first fan universe, plus more top stories
🏀 Metaproof Sports
This is Sophia from 🏀 Metaproof Sports, the weekly newsletter where we update you on how the metaverse and web3 are changing the sports industry.
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This edition is sponsored by Matchday. Collect, trade and play in. Enjoy games built for football’s 5 billion fans.
Matchday features tens of thousands of well-loved footballers, in partnership with the global player union FIFPRO. Players, who 100% own the player cards they collect, can take their squad in 2023 and compete against others in the casual football game. The Matchday Marketplace is now live to get you started in building your dream squad and dive deep into Matchday games next year. Check them out today!
📲 By the numbers
More than 608,000 active accounts have engaged with NFT project Sorare’s free-to-play World Cup game Global Cup 22, which comprises NFT trading cards relating to 18 officially licensed national football teams. (Source)
Disgraced crypto exchange FTX spent close to $100M on sports sponsorships in 2021, followed by Crypto.com with $144M and Socios.com with $132M. (Source)
📫 News & trends
Epic Games’ Fortnite game is bringing in yet another significant metaverse collaboration in the form of NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo, who announced the teaser on his social media. With the collaboration bundle released on December 24 for purchase, unique items are up for grabs among players.
Expect Giannis-themed outfits in three varying styles, including accessories like back bling, harvesting tool, wrap, and more, all themed on the Greek Freak. As of press time, the prices of the bundle haven’t been revealed, yet the skin is expected to cost 1,500 V-Bucks and about 3,000 V-bucks for the bundle.
It’s not the first time for Fortnite to tie up with athletes, with LeBron James, Neymar, Naomi Osaka, Patrick Mahomes, and NBA itself collaborating previously with Epic Games on its battle royale.
In a deal that first marks the presence of Argentine soccer in the metaverse, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) has partnered with metaverse platform Upland to offer exclusive collectibles, including in-game video. The official licensing agreement is bound to see the AFA expand its fan engagement for Argentina’s Professional Football League (LPF), with the goal of connecting fans with players and offering exclusive in-game video footage ownership. In the wake of Argentina’s FIFA World Cup win in Qatar, its bid toward greater fan engagement now involves professional sponsorships in the metaverse, a multi-year partnership with Upload to enable fans to collect, trade, and own FIFA NFTs and World Cup highlights before the tournament even began. Some 195,000 bundles of NFT trading cards were sold out, adding up to 800,000 NFTs, according to Upland.
Velon, the business group for professional road cycling, has announced the launch of Road Code, a new platform built on web3 technology in hopes of creating a digital fan universe. Dubbed as “cycling’s first fan universe,” Road Code is created in collaboration with 10 Velon teams, including Ineos Grenadiers, Bora-Hansgrohe, Soudal-QuickStep, UAE Team Emirates, and Jumbo-Visma. Proposed as an alternative to more traditional, centralized social media channels, it will be built on the Hedera public network, which appears to be a blockchain venture. Cycling fans can expect Velon’s usual on-bike footage and live data, along with a new ranking system, digital collectibles, and team access tokens.
The recent FIFA World Cup has captivated billions of sports fans worldwide, with nearly 26M people alone in the United States viewing the event. Sports gaming and betting is a promising sector within this entire industry, yet many games such as FIFA and NBA 2K are heavily scrutinized for their lack of groundbreaking gameplay or features. Experts say integrating the metaverse into sports gaming and entertainment will finally change the game, making it more immersive and progressive. Esports NFTs, too, can earn organizers and secondary marketplaces money as they incentivize people to purchase. Players and fans can interact in the metaverse and create a new dynamic never before seen, along with immersive camera functionality enabled by AR and VR for a fresh sports viewing experience.
UK-based sports apparel designer JD Sports has jumped on the metaverse train by launching a metaverse-based experience featuring a neon-fueled arcade game in a shopping center. It has teamed up with athletes and creators like heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua, British rapper Kano, and YouTube influencers KSI, Tobi Brown, and Chunkz for the King of the Game metaverse experience. The game will allow fans to build custom avatars and sink their teeth into mini-games within the arcade, as well as engage in activities such as virtual table football, pinball, claw machines, and other arcade classics. Users can also collect JD coins to stand a chance of being featured in a national leaderboard.
Has esports lost its allure among investors? Experts tell Axios that the investment buzz around esports has faded, a stark difference from being among the hottest, most frequently funded sector in gaming for several years going into the COVID pandemic. Concerns over profits have been sending investment firms elsewhere, particularly to crypto-based web3 gaming startups. The numbers are quite telling: out of 695 private gaming investments in the first nine months of 2022, 33 deals worth $310M involved esports, down from 138 esports deals (worth $2.1B) from 718 private financings in gaming in 2021.
Web3 marketplace FanField has added former MLB all-star Jose Canseco to its roster, releasing his first NFT collection in the spring of 2023. Canseco joins former all-pro quarterback Michael Vick, co-founder of FanField, and former NFL Pro Bowl running back Adrian Peterson on the marketplace with its growing list of athletes, where users can gain entry via a desktop computer or mobile app and unlock NFT mystery boxes. Fans can also have virtual one-on-one conversations with FanField athletes and play video games against them online. Back in August, Vick co-founded the marketplace to create opportunities for college athletes and share some of the proceeds to charities that include the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.
Crypto.com’s name has been plastered visibly near the pitch as a sponsor of the World Cup in Qatar, splashing out an undisclosed amount. While nothing new and nothing unlike raising brand awareness by slapping one’s brand logo on a jersey, the relationship between crypto companies and sports may be moving out of the infatuation stage, particularly in the wake of FTX’s collapse. The ruins have left many athletic groups in need of funding, and perhaps have made players wary of blockchain partnerships going forward. Research reveals that FTX spent close to $100M on sports sponsorships in 2021, followed by Crypto.com with $144M and Socios.com with $132M.
Sports NFTs, blockchain-based digital assets that can be verified to be one-of-a-kind and are used to represent digital trading cards, sporting events, and digital memorabilias, offer fans a new way to interact with their favorite teams and athletes. They can be bought in a variety of markets, with OpenSea, Autograph, and Rarible as some of the busiest marketplaces in this space. Incentivizing the use of NFTs for fans are deeper interactions between fan clubs via the virtual collectibles or player cards, while for sports leagues it means creating deeper bonds with fans and creating revenue streams in addition to ticket and merchandise sales, media rights, and sponsorships.
🎾 Beyond the sport: Akshaya.io, world's first 'phygital' platform joins hands with World Tennis League
In partnership with the ongoing World Tennis League (WTL) in Dubai, phygital platform Akshaya.io has unveiled physical and digital memorabilia of top tennis legends, including Novak Djokovic and Natalia Swiatek. These signed items include training gear of players, t-shirts, and caps, and come with exclusive event access and meet-and-greet opportunities during the week-long sporting spectacle. Based in New Delhi, India, Akshaya has invested $10M through its founder and seed investors into building “robust” technology, developing the back end software and strengthening its network nationwide.
Capital Block, a web3 agency for sports and entertainment, has been appointed by the Hungarian football club Debreceni VSC (DVSC) as its official web3 agency. The club is poised to offer new web3 products to connect fans closer to it, with Capital Block responsible for advising and implementing DVSC’s ventures into the space including token launches, NFTs, and a push into the metaverse. Capital Block, which says that web3 is still largely untapped by European football clubs, already works with clubs such as AS Monaco in France, Legia Warsaw in Poland, and Galatasaray in Turkey, for which a first NFT drop sold out in under one minute.
💸 Finance buzz
Indian cricketer Shikhar Dhawan’s new venture capital fund Da One Global Ventures is scouting for sports tech companies worldwide to make early-stage investments, revealing the Abu Dhabi-based fund’s investments would range from $500,000 to $5M. (Source)
🗣️ Quote of the week
“I want Bitcoin to go down a lot further so I can buy some more … Gold is a store of value and so is Bitcoin. If everything went to hell in a hand basket and you had a gold bar you know what would happen? Someone would beat the fuck out of you or kill you and take your gold bar. It’s useless.”
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All content on this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not aim to serve as or replace expert investment advice.
If you are a startup building in the metaverse / web3 ecosystem and are raising capital, please reach out to Sfermion. Sfermion is an investment firm focused on accelerating the emergence of the metaverse.
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