Candy Digital lays off staff as fanatic-backed NFT platform scales back – Sportico.com
Candy Digital, the NFT platform backed by Fanatics, Gary Vaynerchuk and Michael Novogratz, is laying off a large portion of its workforce, according to multiple people familiar with the decision.
The company informed employees of the cuts Monday morning, said the people, who were granted anonymity because the details are private. The cuts include more than a third of the company’s approximately 100 employees.
A representative for Candy Digital did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for Fanatics declined to comment.
The layoffs come amid a “wave of redundancies” spanning technology. Earlier this month, Twitter laid off roughly half of its workforce in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover. Lyft and Stripe recently laid off more than 10% of their respective staffs. Even Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL ) and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN ), two of the largest public companies in America, have instituted hiring freezes.
The cuts have been particularly deep in NFTs and cryptocurrency, a corner of technology that was already in steep decline before the FTX collapse threw the industry into a tailspin. Earlier this month, Dapper Labs, the NFT platform behind NBA Top Shot and NFL All Day, announced a 22% cut. Top Shot had just $1.5 million in sales in October 2022, down 99.3% from $224.1 million in February 2021.
Candy Digital launched in June 2021, when sports NFTs were still white-hot. Fanatics is the majority shareholder, with Novogratz’ Galaxy Digital and Vaynerchuk as equity partners. A few months after launch, the firm raised $100 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion. That round included investments from SoftBank, Insight Partners, Will Ventures, Peyton Manning and a number of other current/retired athletes, whose names were not disclosed.
Candy Digital’s day-to-day operations are run separately from Fanatics. Rubin’s e-commerce giant has an NFT vertical within Topps, the trading card brand it acquired in January.
Candy Digital’s partners include Major League Baseball, WWE and Netflix.
