Sports tops the NFT charts by volume – Ledger Insights
When NFT sales are discussed, there is a tendency to focus on revenue. The big profile picture collections like Cryptopunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club are constantly at or near the top of the leaderboard. Although the transactions for these collections are of high value, they are very few. In contrast, sports and games are where the action is when it comes to volume.
And the contrast is dramatic.
Revenue leader BAYC had just 296 NFT transactions in the past 30 days, but traded $32.8 million, according to CryptoSlam. While NFL All Day is second on the charts in terms of volume, with 482,000 transactions and revenue of $15 million.
NFL All Day, fantasy football collectibles Sorare and NBA Top Shot are in slots two, four and six by number of transactions. Five of the top ten collections by volume are sports, three are games, and one is a game-related collectible.
It would be very easy to attribute the success of sports compilations like Sorare and Dapper Lab’s NFL All Day and NBA Top Shot to massive fan bases. Make no mistake, it helps. But in both cases, they have innovations that are quite subtle, so much so that they seem obvious, especially compared to the likes of Uber and AirBNB.
The genius of video moments
Dapper Labs could have launched animated collectible sports cards. But it chose video instead, which is vastly more lucrative financially. Most sports followers have a limited number of favorite athletes they follow closely. So when it comes to trading cards, there aren’t that many to choose from.
But each athlete has the potential to star in multiple video moments during each game. Therefore, you create an almost unlimited number of collectibles, although of course some will be better than others.
That has been confirmed with NBA Top Shot, the first of Dapper’s sports NFT initiatives, which surpassed $1 billion in cumulative trades a few months back.
The combination of a large fan base and ongoing engagement is consistent with Dapper’s stated goal of attracting newcomers to the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
While Sorare is in a different segment than Dapper, the business model also encourages more sales. It took the concept of fantasy sports games that have been around for decades and added the web3 tweak of making the players on your fantasy team NFTs. Active fantasy players rarely keep the same team all the time, hence the desire to buy new ones or switch regularly.
With success comes VC money
In retrospect, big hits often look easy. But we remember the early days of Sorares when there were a small number of transactions. Despite that, it managed to sign up a number of football teams. The company’s persistence was rewarded last year with a massive $680 million Series B funding round at a $4.3 billion valuation.
It has used its deep pockets to double down on soccer with deals with leagues such as La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and MLS. Since then, it has branched out from soccer to golf and baseball, signing licensing deals with the PGA Tour and MLB. With Serena Williams as an advisor, tennis can be expected soon. A Morningstar survey showed that tennis and golf are among the most lucrative sports in terms of willingness to bet money.
Dapper Labs has also done well for itself. At the end of last year, it raised $250 million at a $7.5 billion valuation, leading to more than $600 million raised. It also founded the Flow blockchain where all the NFTs are dropped.
