Soccer World Cup in Qatar: NFT instead of Panini

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NFT Ready: Superstar

Photo: PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP

So far, the business with the small football pictures was firmly in Italian hands.

The Panini company from Modena has been selling adhesive collector's cards since 1961, and internationally since the 1970 World Cup.

It is a lucrative business: The privately held company recently had a turnover of around 1.3 billion euros.

In Germany, a bag with five pictures costs one euro, but if you want to fill a whole World Cup album with the 670 different pictures, you can quickly add up to hundreds of euros.

However, things are not going quite as smoothly for Panini as in the past.

The late timing of the World Cup in Qatar is causing problems for the publisher, as the managing director of the German subsidiary,

, recently explained.

Business expectations have been lowered compared to previous World Cups.

At the same time, the entire market is changing.

The Italians still hold the valuable rights to the World Cup tournaments.

But the US rival Topps has secured the European football tournaments and Bundesliga, among other things, and the world's largest sports marketer Fanatics the rights to the major US sports leagues.

But above all: All the hype surrounding stickers is shifting to the Internet.

Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappé and Neymar are increasingly being collected and exchanged digitally.

NFT for artists and ball artists

This is made possible by NFT.

The abbreviation stands for "Non Fungible Token" and describes a non-exchangeable, digital owner certificate.

An NFT aims to guarantee the authenticity of a digital product such as a video or image.

The token can then be viewed, copied or downloaded by anyone on the Internet, but it only belongs to the person who purchased the certificate.

Storing the token on the blockchain makes it unique, immutable, and traceable.

The most important terms and segments in the NFT business

Expand SectionBlockchain

Decentralized networks of thousands of computers keep a common register.

Ownership of exchangeable currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum can be entered there, as well as ownership of goods such as works of art or celebrity collectibles.

Expand the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) section

Dollar bills or gold coins are freely interchangeable or fungible.

For non-homogeneous and therefore non-fungible goods, there are individual blockchain entries ("Non-Fungible Token", NFT).

In 2021, the prices for some of them have exploded.

The hype has now died down.

Expand sectionCollectibles

More than half of the NFT market by revenue consists of small images created to decorate user profiles on social networks such as Twitter or Facebook ("Profle Pics").

The most valuable collections are the Larva Labs programming team's cryptopunks and the Bored Ape Yacht Club's monkey heads (each created in batches of 10,000).

The category also includes digital trading cards from athletes.

Expand areaNFT art

Unique crypto art has a 15 percent market share of the total NFT market.

A few unique pieces by well-known digital artists achieved the highest individual prices.

Artist

raised the equivalent of $92 million from nearly 30,000 buyers in December for shares in his art project The Merge.

Expand sectionGames and Metaverse

NFTs for computer games, with which users purchase and trade weapons or costumes, also hold a 15 percent market share.

Another 5 percent is land, clothing or rights of use in virtual worlds such as Decentraland or The Sandbox.

NFTs are already relatively widespread in the art market.

The big breakthrough for the technology came in February 2021, when the auction house Christie's auctioned off the digital collage "The First 5000 Days" by graphic designer

aka Beeple for $69 million.

As a result, prices for NFTs exploded.

According to data provider Chainanalysis, more than $44 billion flowed into NFTs worldwide last year.

The big hype of the NFT bubble is now over, the exaggerated prices have dropped significantly in some cases.

But the concept works.

In the meantime, the sports business has also discovered the tokens for itself.

More and more sports associations and platform providers are bustling about in the business – and sometimes achieving unbelievable prices.

The American professional leagues are pioneers, in particular the NBA basketball league, which produces unique images or videos as NFT with its Top Shot project.

Last year, it generated sales of around one billion euros.

The most expensive token ever sold in the sports business was a combination of all six championship rings of the Golden State Warriors from the NBA with the equivalent of almost 800,000 euros.

But technology has also found its way into football.

For example, in February this year, a trading card for Norwegian star striker

(22) was sold for around 609,000 euros.

The Haaland card thus ended up in second place among the most valuable sports NFTs of all time.

Fifa and CR7 get on board in Qatar just in time for the World Cup

No wonder that the world football association Fifa also wants to get involved in this apparently lucrative business – right on time for the start of the World Cup in Qatar.

On the new NFT platform "Fifa+ Collect", football fans can now buy and collect special moments from World Cup history as NFTs - similar to the NBA's top shot collection.

With the start of the soccer World Cup in Qatar, images of the current games are also to be offered as NFT.

The cards can not only be collected and exchanged.

Owners can also pit their digital players against each other and reportedly even make profits.

As a technological partner, the association has chosen the blockchain platform Algorand with the cryptocurrency Algo, whose prices fluctuate heavily even after the FTX disaster.

And just a few days before the start of the tournament in Qatar, Portugal's superstar

(37) is even launching his own NFT collection.

"CR7" will start selling its tokens on November 18 exclusively via the NFT trading platform of the world's largest crypto exchange Binance.

The collection will contain seven animated statues of Ronaldo and unlock additional features upon receipt, including autographs and a mystery box.

Depending on the rarity, an NFT should cost between 77 and 10,000 US dollars.

DFL cooperates with the multi-billion dollar start-up Sorare

Unlike Fifa, the Germans have been involved in the new digital business for some time.

The German Football League (DFL) announced a cooperation with the football platform Sorare in October 2021, which has since been selling NFTs from the first and second Bundesliga on its website.

Sorare was founded in 2018 by

(36) and

(38) as a fantasy football game in Paris and currently has around 120 employees.

In total, the platform has more than 380,000 active users per month.

In addition to the DFL, the Spanish LaLiga – the counterpart to the first Bundesliga – as well as the clubs Paris St. Germain and Liverpool FC are also Sorare partners.

Over time, the founders have found many prominent supporters such as

(54),

(31),

(31),

(41) and

(35).

The institutional investors are also well-known: the Japanese Softbank and the financial investors Benchmark Capital and Accel are among them.

According to CBInsights, the start-up is now valued at 4.3 billion US dollars, making it one of the most valuable start-ups in France.

After the spectacular financing round of 680 million euros in autumn 2021, founder Julia said about his vision to manager magazin: "We are building an entertainment giant."

According to its own statements, Sorare should have been profitable from the start.

No wonder, after all, the margin is almost 100 percent of the sales price.

The start-up creates values ​​practically out of nothing - and the users pay with real money.

According to Sorare, around 10 percent of the revenue generated goes to the football clubs and leagues, and the company pays 50 percent back to the users if they take part in online tournaments or the like with their digital players, for example.

Technically, unlike Fifa, Sorare relies on the Ethereum blockchain, which has just undergone a large-scale transition.

Company boss Julia has also started a new manager game about the digital World Cup heroes especially for the World Cup.

He also just presented another prominent ambassador:

(35).

DFB partner is fan zone – supported by Porsche Ventures

The German Football Association (DFB), on the other hand, has opted for another provider.

The Berlin company Fanzone has the rights to the digital trading cards of the German national teams for women and men, the U-21 national team and the 3rd division.

Other partners are the German Basketball Association (DBB) and the German Olympic Sports Association (DOSB).

The start-up was founded in 2020 by

(54),

(40) and

(39) and has already attracted prominent supporters such as ex-soccer player

(61) and

(38). .

One of the first investors was Porsche Ventures, the venture capital department of the sports car manufacturer.

Fanzone currently has around 20 employees, and the company does not provide any information on sales.

After all, according to their own statements, this platform now has around 100,000 users, a good half of them from Germany.

The Berliners use the so-called Polygon blockchain, which uses the energy-efficient proof-of-stake mechanism.

Win-win for associations and providers - risks for users

For the sports associations, the platforms are a lucrative additional source of income after the loss of income due to the stadiums being closed due to the pandemic.

The providers, in turn, reach significantly more potential customers who may never have dealt with cryptocurrencies or NFTs before, but now see an opportunity to network with their clubs.

However, the digital collector's card business also harbors risks.

The courses in the crypto world are extremely volatile, especially since the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX and the consequences for the entire industry.

The volatility of NFTs is also very high at the moment.

In addition, the market is still very dependent on the development of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

"The trading volume on the large NFT platforms has slumped drastically in the past few months in parallel with the developments on the crypto market," says Bitkom expert

- in view of the allegations of fraud against FTX, a lot of trust is likely to be lost.

Another problem is that some platforms are self-contained.

"Users can then only trade their NFTs via the respective providers and cannot take them from one service to the next in their wallet," says Faupbel.

"If the company goes bankrupt, the tokens are worthless."

The rarity value of the cards is also treacherous with the platforms.

Finally, providers can always introduce new categories to sell more cards.

Then there would be a player not only to buy 1000 times, but 5000 times.

This would also reduce the price of the NFTs already sold.

In the sports business in particular, many associations therefore rely on additional offers such as meet and greets, VIP tickets or individual videos of the stars.

This connects the digital world with the analog one and creates added value beyond the digital value.

This should primarily attract the right fans and not just the speculators and reduce price fluctuations.

In any case, it could soon be over with the classic stickers.

The possibilities in the digital world seem too tempting.

And the old gentlemen from Modena don't want to give up the business that easily.

As a precaution, Panini has already built up a second mainstay - and also sells the portraits of the football professionals digitally.