Crypto Corner: The Sports Slice

After Dapper Labs partnership with the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams last week, the leading digital sports memorabilia platform headed into this week with the official launch of it’s NFL All Day product, which was in a limited-open beta before this week.

Meanwhile, a once-dominant football club is looking down the barrel of disappointment, while another is teaming up with a “walk to earn” platform. There’s often high high’s and low low’s, and this past week has been no exception. Let’s review all of the past week of activity in all things sports and crypto.

The Sports Slice

Premier League: Manchester United’s Drama On And Off The Pitch, Aston Villa’s New Partner

Between a brutal 4-0 loss to Brentford last weekend and the consistent flow of club sale rumors, there’s never a dull moment for Man U. This week, drama elevated with Elon Musk said for a brief moment that he was buying the club, leading to a stock price (and even a fake sports fan token) up in price.

Meanwhile in the Premier League, Aston Villa has found a new partner with cryptocurrency gaming platform Duelbits. The EPL has largely restrained front-of-jersey crypto partners (or at least certainly dissuaded them), but crypto deals have still been present in the league. Clubs are set to vote on a potential ban on front-of-jersey partners later this year; for Aston Villa, this latest deal with secure the platform as the club’s “Official European Betting Partner.” EPL clubs have been especially active in the crypto space, arguably more than most leagues in major sports, but many have faced uphill challenges from failing projects or concerns around reputations – some of which have led to dissolved deals.

Atletico de Madrid And WhaleFin Team Up With STEPN

Football club Atletico de Madrid is fresh off the heels of it’s new crypto deal with crypto trading platform WhaleFin and is not stepping on the brakes with a project to kick it off. The duo is pairing up with Solana-based sneaker platform STEPN, for an NFT collection that will consist of 1,001 digitally hand-drawn Atletico de Madrid sneakers. Signed jerseys and NFT airdrops are expected to be in the mix.

NFL All Day Goes All Out

Will NFL All Day follow the footsteps of fellow Dapper Lab’s product NBA Top Shot? This past week signaled a major milestone for the Dapper Lab’s platform, as NFL All Day released it’s first-ever public pack this week following a period of limited, but widespread beta access. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes led a bulk of the marketing charge with a featured content piece. The QB is expected to be the “face” of All Day for the upcoming season.

NFL All Day will look to take learning lessons from NBA Top Shot, which is still the flagship NFT project for the NBA, but one that has seen tepid engagement compared to the early 2021 surge.

It's been a volatile ride for Dapper Lab's FLOW token, which has seen brief highs nearing $4.00 but currently sits just north of $2.00. | Source: FLOW-USD on TradingView.com

Socios Secures Italian Regulatory Approval

Fan tokens in sports have been a tricky landscape to maneuver through, with regulations across the globe proving to be a major hurdle currently. Fan token leader Socios found some silver lining in cloudy days, as the platform secured regulatory approval in Italy last week. Socios has a number of different Italian football partners and has certainly taken the “better to ask for forgiveness” approach and penetrated targeted markets (even with limited scope, where constrained) and sought to simply have a presence in order to establish itself. We’ll see if it works out for Socios, and fan tokens at large.

Sports & NIL: BYU And Ocavu 

Last week it was USC, this week it’s BYU, as west coast US collegiate institutions grow in numbers with NIL mentions. Utah-based Brigham Young University is in the middle of what is anticipated to be a roughly $20M deal with NFT marketplace Ocavu, which is less than a week old and is expected to take a ‘NBA Top Shot’ esque approach, highlighting top plays and performances from BYU athletes.

NIL deals continue to be a pillar point of conversation when it comes to crypto and sports – the two have entered the atmosphere at similar times and both often pose to challenge the status quo in their own respects.

Featured image from Pexels, Charts from TradingView.com

The writer of this content is not associated or affiliated with any of the parties mentioned in this article. This is not financial advice.