1. With your ‘investor hat’ on, what do you see as the key challenges facing the NFT market, particularly in a sports context?
DO: Ultimately, accessibility is going to be crucial. How long until we reach mass market adoption of digital wallets where the general public can buy, sell and store NFTs? Crypto exchanges are, in the main, used in the ‘early adopters’ of digital currencies.
I always use the example of a football stadium; if you took 80,000 fans inside Wembley watching England in the finals of Euro 2020….how many of those people really understand of hold any cryptocurrency? Think of it as a Venn Diagram with football fans in one circle, and another circle of all the people in the blockchain or cryptocurrency world. I don’t suspect there is really much of an overlapping area shaded in grey. Companies like Socios and Sorare, and all the partnerships they are announcing with Clubs and Federations, are really helping to promote and educate people about digital assets; but as yet I suspect not many fans in the stands really understand what these businesses do, let alone are regular active users of these platforms. eToro is a good example of a platform created to make share trading accessible to the general public, did a great job sponsoring five different clubs to help build awareness of digital currency trading. Would be interesting to know how many fans opened eToro accounts and started trading as a result.
As I see it, that is the biggest challenge for NFTs; to become more accessible to the public and allow more people to benefit from this new innovative technology.
Most importantly there is the regulatory aspect. The crypto world is largely unregulated at the moment and there is a high degree of uncertainty and therefore nervousness across the industry, leading to market volatility. Let’s see what will happen when governments/regulators start cracking down in different jurisdictions across the world?
2. Staying on the topic of accessibility, how do you think NFTs can become more accessible to the wider public?
DO: It will take time, but I think Bitcoin and Dogecoin and all the social media hype ‘pomping’ these coins, is certainly helping to build wider market awareness and therefore public adoption.
The blockchain/crypto industry has to build trust amongst retail and institutional investor, proving holding digital assets is a secure and safe method to store value.
Personally, in this moment, I still believe people generally prefer investing in physical, tangible assets. It’s more real to own a the pair of boots Messi scored a hattrick in, rather than a digital video clip covered into an NFT, that’s deemed valuable because of the smart contract is written on.
Having said all this, of course younger generations think differently. You only have to go to blockchain events, or partipate in some of the thousands of Telegram and Signal Crypto groups to witness that a young, tech savvy , digital native demographic are the retail investors trading and promoting these assets. They are the voice and influence of the crypto generatio. I suspect there is certainly a high degree of overlap into the NFT space.
3. In terms of how you see the NFT market developing in the sports space, do you think we need to see a more joined up approach? Or is a fragmented market place no bad thing?
I worked on one of the successful ICOs of 2018 (in the online video space), which taught me a lot about how digital currencies can create new commercial models where revenue generation benefit everyone fairly, from content creator, distributor, advertising and most importantly the viewer. Once I completed this project we started working on a number of sports blockchain and NFT projects (back in 2018 when non-fungible tokens were understood as more of a tech term that a tradable asset). We applied our experience to the sports world and devised really exciting opportunities to utilise global digital currencies to reshape the ownership, I.P. and distribution of commercial revenues amongst stakeholders across the sporting ecosystem. We developed totally new approaches where Federations, Clubs, Players, media platforms and rights owners, can work together, all benefiting from micro-payment transactions, fair distribution of revenues and most importantly utilising the transparency that using blockchain technology ensures.
We are seeing multiple new NFT projects launching across the sporting world right now, I think we all read about a new project everyday in some email newsletter. My view is there has to be some form or aggregation or consolidation play to bring the fan communities and therefore ‘the digital assets’ together. Through intuitive digital platforms, accessible to all, and fundamentally, trusted implicitly.
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