Premier League gets Ethereum-based digital cards with Sorare partnership

January 31, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Blockchain

Sorare seals partnership with the English Premier League to issue Ethereum-based digital player cards for its popular fantasy sports platform.

Blockchain-powered fantasy sports firm Sorare has sealed a deal with the English Premier League to mint Ethereum-based digital player cards on its platform.

Sorare has driven an interesting use case for Ethereum-based fantasy sports and digital card trading in recent years, offering fans the ability to mint, collect and trade various player cards with other users across a variety of nonfungible token (NFT) marketplaces.

Cointelegraph reached out to Sorare to clarify details of their latest deal, bringing the Premier League to the fingertips of football fans. While the partnership was officially announced on January 30, a Sorare spokesperson said discussions between the league and the company had been ongoing for a lengthy period.

*Premier League player cards are available on Sorare’s platform, with some “super rare” cards already valued at over $100 or more.*

Sorare began to make moves within the Premier League network in 2019, signing West Ham United as its first English club as a partner of its platform. Cointelegraph has learned that the League and Sorare have agreed to a four-year deal, with the value of the partnership undisclosed for contractual reasons.

The company spokesperson also broke down the deal’s structure, with Sorare making an upfront downpayment to the league for licensing rights. From there, digital card sales result in a percentage split between Sorare and the Premier League.

Sorare mints digital cards of players from the Premier League on the Ethereum blockchain. The platform has long used ERC-721 token standard for its NFT player cards, which fans can collect and trade and use to play on the platform’s free-to-play fantasy sports league.

The Premier League digital cards will be available for initial purchase on Sorare before being available for trading on compatible marketplaces like OpenSea. The fantasy sports platform continues to be a proponent for connecting fans, players and organizations with blockchain technology:

“For Sorare, this underlying technology is the means, not the ends, to connecting users with their favourite clubs, and we welcome it powering the next generation of sports fandom and entertainment.”

NFTs, including digital trading cards and highlights from various sporting codes, have become popular collectibles in recent years. NBA Top Shots exploded in popularity in 2021, while the football world has continued to see synergies with blockchain-based platforms.

Sports sponsorships sealed amid market turmoil as Man City inks deal with OKX

July 11, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Manchester City fans will also have a chance to win season tickets in the OKX Hospitality Box via scanning QR codes on street art commissioned by the crypto exchange.

Crypto exchange OKX has announced that it has made a deal with English Premier League (EPL) champions Manchester City to become the team’s training kit sponsor for the 2022-23 season.

Despite the current bear market, it appears that crypto and sports partnerships have been going strong, with fellow EPL team Everton also recently signing a match kit sponsorship with crypto gambling firm Stake. At the same time, PSG has also launched preseason NFT tickets.

The OKX deal will put a fair amount of eyeballs on company branding, given that Manchester City won the EPL last season and is looking primed to make another tilt at the league this upcoming season after signing the Norwegian star striker Erling Haaland.

As part of the deal, OKX’s logo will feature on both the men’s and the women’s training gear until mid-2023, with current previews showing OKX’s name on the front of training shirts in the lower chest area.

Additionally, OKX stated that it had commissioned popular street artist “Akse P19” and the Global Street Art Agency to create four artworks across Manchester that include QR codes. These can be scanned by fans for a chance to win season tickets in the OKX Hospitality Box. The street art pieces depict players such as Haaland, Jack Grealish, João Cancelo, and John Stones.

The duo has held a partnership since March after OKX was signed on to become Manchester City’s Official Cryptocurrency Exchange Partner. They have also touted that more Web3-focused fan engagement experiences will be rolled out.

OKX was founded in 2017 and is based in the Republic of Seychelles. The firm claims to have more than 20 million customers across the globe from around 180 international markets. It supports trading on top assets such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Polkadot (DOT), and Cardano (ADA).

The most recent crypto deal that precedes Manchester City’s is Everton’s deal with Stake, which was announced on June 9. The multi-year agreement is said to be worth roughly $12 million a season, marking the club’s “highest front-of-shirt deal in the club’s 144-year history,” according to a statement from Everton. Stake also held a sponsorship deal with Watford F.C. last season, who will be plying their trade in the second tier of pro-English football after being relegated.

PSG jumps on NFTs

This week, French Ligue 1 champions Paris Saint-Germain F.C. (PSG) also announced a crypto-related move, with the team rolling out NFT tickets for its pre-season tour of Japan later this month.

To commemorate PSG’s first trip to Japan since 1995, the team is offering three premier NFT tickets that offer buyers VIP access to games, meet and greets, player autographs, and private parties with a select group of players who were not specified.

The NFTs are on sale until Wednesday, and to obtain all of those supposed benefits, the buyer will have to pay a hefty 180.36 ETH, worth around $207,000 at current prices.

Nifty News: Are Tai Lopez NFTs the market top? Alibaba massage gun scandal… and more

March 10, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Alibaba NFT Marketplace

Tai Lopez’s NFT drop has caused a stir while Alibaba has banned users from using massage guns to spam buy NFTs.

Some in the NFT community fear the market top may be in after Tai Lopez, the controversial entrepreneur and social media star, famous for his oddball marketing tactics, launched his own NFT project.

Tai lopez has to be the top. this madness cant continue.
— fxnction aka i gotabigdick.eth (@0x_fxnction) March 5, 2022

The NFT project is dubbed the “OG (original garage) Social Club” and pays homage to his highly memed-on ad from 2015 in which Lopez flaunted his Ferrari and the 2000 new books in his garage to promote his business courses of allegedly dubious value.

The NFTs come in three levels of rarity, including the silver "Mentorship" cards, gold "Mastermind" cards, and black "1 on 1 Mentorship" cards which all provide access to an online social club and varying levels of access to Lopez himself.

For example, in the Silver tier there is an NFT, reportedly priced at 18.4 Ether ($50,000), that grants the owner a chance to win $10,000 via one on one basketball game with Lopez. While an NFT from the gold tier enables the hodler to watch a two-hour movie with Lopez, once per year for a maximum of three years.

Alibaba’s NFT marketplace bans massage guns

Alibaba has reportedly suspended more than 680 users from its NFT marketplace Jingtan for using massage guns and computer software to spam the purchase process to buy nonfungibles on the platform.

According to an Alibaba representative who spoke to Forkast News on March 9, the firm’s technical department believes that some users were using the massage guns to perform rapid mouse clicks on buy buttons.

The accounts accused of spam buying have received one-year suspensions, with Jingtan labeling the activity “cheating” and in violation of its user policy.

English Premier League eyes NFTs

The English Premier League (EPL) is reportedly aiming to launch officially licensed NFTs later this year.

The EPL is the most famous pro-football league in the world and wants to replicate the success of tokenized sports collectibles from other projects such as Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot.

According to a March 8 report from UK newspaper The Telegraph, all 20 clubs discussed the sale of NFT rights at a shareholders meeting on Tuesday, and the League is carefully considering which blockchain and firm to partner with as the deal could be worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Further details are sparse at this stage.

Bored Ape volume tanks 65%

The volume for the highly popular and recently charitable Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT project has dropped 65% over the past 30 days. But that may just because they’ve got way too expensive.

According to DappRadar data, the BAYC generated $92.14 million worth of secondary sales over the past month from a total of 526 traders (which is down 58.22% also).

While the NFT market appears to be going through a strong downturn across the board, a contributing factor to the BAYC’s decreased volume may also be its booming floor price.

DappRadar’s data shows the floor price is up 22.16% over the past 30 days to sit at around a whopping $197,800.

Other Nifty News

The Crypto.com exchange announced the airdrop of its "The Moment of Truth" nonfungible token (NFT) collection on Wednesday featuring Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James to 5,550 randomly selected viewers of its Super Bowl commercial.

The Sandbox metaverse announced its partnership with NFT community World of Women, or WoW, to launch the WoW Foundation. A $25 million grant from The Sandbox will help fund the foundation over the next five years.

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