Will college athletes enter the tech space with new NFT craze?

By: Lauren Green

11/7/21

With athletes now being able to profit off of their name, image, and likeness within the NCAA, many have already cashed in on major endorsement deals, while others have decided to take a different approach through the cryptocurrency realm. 

Within the cryptocurrency space, there’s a new asset on the rise called NFTs — non-fungible tokens. Professional athletes in the NBA, MLB, and NFL have already begun navigating and investing in NFTs.

But what exactly is an NFT?

“It’s one unique digital asset,” Sasa Pesic, a postdoctoral research fellow at Arizona State University’s Blockchain Lab, explained. “It can be, you know, a piece of art, it can be a piece of real estate, whatever — something that cannot basically be multiplied that easily.”

With big names in sports — Stephen Curry, Cam Newton, and Tom Brady — investing in NFTs, there’s been a large surge in popularity and growth of these assets. Curry bought a digital art piece NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club — a very upscale and notable community that creates NFTs.

Curry purchased this NFT for $180,000. The picture of a unique cartoon ape dressed in a suit sits as his profile picture and shows a large form of status to his 15.5 million followers. As NFTs continue to gain traction, their value and status keeps rising.

“I’m expecting a boom in the next two years” Pesic said. “That’s what we’ve seen with blockchain trends.”

Unlike purchasing NFTs of caricatures, some athletes are now making NFTs of themselves and with that comes more perks than just owning a jpeg or video file.

“It can be signed memorabilia,” an anonymous community manager at an NFT marketplace company, Bitski, said. “It can be access to private communities and discord. It can be a meet-and-greets.”

With the opportunity of creating your own NIL deal essentially, NFTs are gaining traction for NCAA athletes already.

Carson Strong, successful quarterback for the University of Nevada, Reno, has come out with his own NFT trading card as a collaboration with Candy Digital and listed on Bitski’s website. Strong’s NFT is a collection limited to 100 of these digital cards with a selling price of $250. Strong’s cards are currently sold out.

With the success of Strong’s NFT, it would be hard for his teammates not to take notice.

“I think that if the opportunity presented itself, a lot of people on my team will try to pursue that,” Nevada defensive lineman Amir Johnson said. “Because who doesn’t want to establish or get some deals off themselves and have something they can sign and sell.”

Johnson currently has two NIL deals — one with the sunglasses company Pit Viper and one with chair company Zipchair.

Strong’s influence on his team not only comes from being a leader as quarterback, but from his performance and accomplishments on the field. Strong’s name can be seen in many articles and draft boards for the 2022 NFL Draft. 

Before Strong’s NFT and the surplus of others out right now, there was an NCAA athlete who made the first leap into this niche tech space last year.

Although NIL was not yet established, former Iowa basketball standout Luka Garza created and auctioned off an NFT when his season ended and he was no longer an NCAA athlete. 

Garza was very ahead of the NFT trend and sold his for a whopping $41,141 becoming the first college athlete to do such a thing and likely attracting more to do the same. 

Although Strong’s soldout NFTs and Garza’s hefty payout from his auction are appealing to other college athletes, it’s still seen as a risky outlet — especially if many athletes are simultaneously trying to make a quick buck.

“If enough people do this and they don’t back it up with utility or community-building, then it’s all just a wild, speculative investment,” community manager of Bitski said. “And it’s only worth what people think it’s worth. And so if you look at the statistics on OpenSea (a popular NFT marketplace), the vast majority of NFTs sell for like not much at all.”

Professional athletes have more room to work with in this realm because of their well-established status. The new territory of NFTs and uncertainty that comes with it is what’s stopping the massive surge of other college athletes joining this wave. 

“If you try to put a product out and it’s a terrible product or it falls apart, or it’s faulty, then you don’t want your name tied to things like that,” Johnson said. “So I just think definitely people want to make sure their quality is what their name is.”

The NBA and MLB have already capitalized off of NFTs by creating their own marketplace platforms where NFTs can be purchased — NBA Top Shot serves the NBA community while the MLB launched a partnership with an already established NFT marketplace, Candy Digital.

With large partnerships in place with professional sports teams, a partnership with the NCAA could be very likely in the future as more and more college athletes enter this uncharted territory.

“It’s just that the intersection of cryptocurrency digital ownership as NFTs and then like real money and sports fever are all kind of mashing together right now,” community manager of Bitski said. “And you can say that’s great for the athletes.”