NFL

Nifty News: NFL All Day opens to the public, Boss Beauties go to Hollywood and more

Oscar-winning actor Anthony Hopkins is jumping on the NFT train, while lovers of fine art are set to enjoy a fancy exhibition event in Decentraland next week.

NFL fans at large will now be able to get their hands on digital keepsakes of their favorite football stars after Dapper Labs’ NFL All Day nonfungible tokens (NFTs) finally opened to the public after a seven-month-long closed beta.

On Wednesday, The National Football League (NFL), the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), and Dapper officially launched the project and announced the first public NFT drop, a pack of four NFTs dubbed Headliner consisting of four different new player moments.

Users will have the chance to get their hands on NFTs depicting popular players such as Tom Brady, Trevor Lawrence, Javonte Williams, and Jalen Ramsey. There will be a total of 22,500 packs on sale for $59 a pop.

The NFTs come in different rarity tiers of common, rare and legendary, with just 187 packs containing a highly sought-after legendary NFT.

Much like Dapper’s first officially licensed NBA Top Shot project, NFL All Day offers tokenized player and team collectibles depicting various in-game video highlights known as “moments.” There are also GameFi elements added to the experience via avenues such as collector challenges to earn rewards in NFTs, game tickets, VIP experiences, jerseys and others.

The project has been in closed beta since February and has generated more than $37 million worth of sales to date according to data from CryptoSlam.

“Last year’s soft launch brought in a surge of early adopters who began collecting video highlight NFTs of NFL plays and we plan to grow the number of users significantly with the official launch of the platform,” noted Joe Ruggiero, the senior vice president of consumer products at the NFL.

NFT start up pens Hollywood deal

NFT start-up Boss Beauties has penned a representation deal with major Hollywood talent agency WME.

As part of the deal, WME will represent the company across the entertainment sector as it works to secure Boss Beauties intellectual licensing (IP) deals in film, Web3, gaming, events and brand partnerships.

The Boss Beauties project consists of 10,000 unique tokenized digital art portraits depicting female avatars with various career choices such as CEOs, pilots, doctors and astronauts. The collection reportedly sold out in 90 mins after launch in September.

The project has generated more than $48.3 million worth of sales to date, with a portion of the proceeds from primary and secondary sales going toward empowering women via mentorships and scholarships.

CryptoPunks creators Larva Labs signed a similar deal with competing agency UTA back in September.

Metaverse Art Week 2022

Decentraland, one of the biggest Metaverse platforms in the blockchain sector, is set to host the third-annual Metaverse Art Week event in its virtual world between Aug. 24 and Aug. 28.

The event will see a wide array of curated NFT art being featured from big names such as Sotheby’s, OpenSea and Artnet, while there will also scheduled panel discussions, a virtual outdoor sculpture garden and a 3D interactive art wall.

“The third annual Metaverse Art Week will explore how the human spirit is hardwired to elicit an emotional response when presented with art inspired by mathematical designs present in nature, and how metaverse technology is pushing the boundaries of programmatic art and redefining what an immersive experience is,” the Decentraland team wrote in an announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

Related: Celebrities called out for shilling NFTs: Nifty Newsletter, Aug 10–16

From Golden Globes to NFTs: Sir Anthony Hopkins

Renowned 84-year-old actor Sir Anthony Hopkins has jumped aboard the NFT gravy train by announcing The Eternal Collection, a set of 10 digitally animated NFT pieces depicting Hopkins as various Jungian psychological archetypes.

The various 1-of-1 NFT artwork pieces feature realistic digital renderings of Hopkins’ face as the Hero, the Rebel, the Magician, the Sage, the Ruler, the Explorer, the Lover, the Creator, the Giver, and the Jester. The auctions are set to go live on OpenSea on September 16. The face of each art piece will also be used to create 100 profile picture NFTs for each of the 10 pieces, equating to 1,010 NFTs in total. The project is in collaboration with Web3 media company Orange Comet.

The Eternal Anthony Hopkins: Orange Comet

Other Nifty News:

The Australian Football League (AFL)’s first limited edition drop of NFTs sold out in just under 12 hours on Wednesday. The project is called AFL Mint and follows a similar format to NBA Top Shot and NFL All Day. The first Ripper Skipper 2022 drop consisted of 3,800 packs which generated more than $130,000 in revenue for AFL Mint.

Solana-based wallet provider Phantom launched a new burn feature on Thursday, which enables users to remove spam NFTs sent by scammers.

Houston Texans becomes first NFL team to sell game suite with crypto

After penning a deal with Texas-based crypto wallet providers BitWallet, the Houston Texans join a long list of crypto partnerships and payment deals in the NFL.

National Football League (NFL) team Houston Texans has become the first organization in the league to sell single-game suites in exchange for crypto.

The move comes as part of a deal with Texas-based crypto firm BitWallet, which as of Tuesday, became the official crypto wallet provider for the team. BitWallet will also provide intermediary services by exchanging crypto for cash for the Houston Texans.

According to an announcement from the Texans, local digital marketing agency EWR Digital made the first single-game suite purchasing using crypto shortly after the offer launched, making it the first time a game suite has been sold in exchange for digital assets in the history of the sport.

It appears the crypto deal is just for suites, as there has been no mention of being able to purchase regular game day tickets with digital assets at this stage. 

A game suite refers to a luxury private viewing box in the stadium that is often decked out with buffets, expensive alcohol, bathrooms, TVs, attendants and a prime location to view the game.

The Texans’ website doesn’t list a price for single-game or full-season suites, instead asking people to first submit an inquiry to secure one. From the Seat estimates a single game suite for the team costs anywhere from $14,000 to $25,000. However, a BitWallet representative told Cointelegraph that the figure can go as high as $40,000.

BitWallet claims to be supported in over 160 countries and currently enables users to trade or hodl Bitcoin (BTC), and has plans to roll out support for Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Tether (USDT) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) over the next couple of months. 

NFL, crypto and blockchain

The Dallas Cowboys became the first team in the NFL to pen a crypto sponsorship deal in April after Blockchain.com signed on to be its official digital asset partner over a multi-year time frame.

The NFL and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) also partnered with Flow blockchain creators Dapper Labs in late 2021 to launch the licensed NFL All Day NFT collectible project. The deal also saw the NFL and NFLPA take an equity stake in Dapper, and the duo likely have fetched a fair cut of the $36.8 million worth of sales NFL All Day has generated since February.

The league also has many crypto-friendly players that have opted to take either a chunk of their salary or contract bonuses in digital assets, including top names such as Green Bay Packers star quarterback Aaron Rodgers, former LA Rams wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and Carolina Panthers’ quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who was the top draft pick in 2021.

Related: NFT utility to remedy ticketing dilemmas? Experts weigh in

Iconic quarterback Tom Brady has also dabbled in the space by launching his own nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace Autograph in April 2021, and also famously gave a fan 1 BTC (worth $62,000 at the time) to get his historic 600th-touchdown-pass ball back in October.