If Peter Sagan can’t sell an NFT, no one in cycling can

Here we go again: another pro cycling star launching an NFT collection. This time it’s none other than three-time world champion Peter Sagan.

The Slovakian is no stranger to selling his own celebrity in interesting ways – remember that US$21,000 commemorative medal he flogged a few years back? – but this new venture takes things (and certainly the prices) to a whole new level.

Before we dive deeper into this very exciting news, let’s pause for a quick refresher on NFTs (or a brief introduction if you’ve managed to avoid this space so far).

NFTs – non-fungible tokens – are digital objects that can be bought, sold and collected online, made possible by a piece of technology called a blockchain. Normally, as in the case of the Sagan Collection, an NFT is a piece of digital art (sometimes with additional data), which is either unique or limited in number.

Anyone can download or copy the digital artwork itself, but actually own of the original artwork: which belongs to whoever paid for the NFT and has it in their digital wallet.

If you’re just coming to the NFT discussion and this all sounds a little strange, you’re certainly not wrong. But let’s continue.

Sagan’s NFT collection comes out via a new venture called Project Fuerza that creates digital art inspired by professional riders’ biometric data. By signing on to Project Fuerza, Sagan joins the likes of Mark Cavendish, Geraint Thomas and Rohan Dennis, who all have their own NFTs with Fuerza already.

At the time of writing, the Peter Sagan Collection contains 23 pieces of digital art inspired by data from some of the most important races in Sagan’s career. You have this one inspired by his 100th career win, at the 2017 GP de Quebec:

Or there’s this one from his win at the 2016 Road Worlds in Doha – his second of three consecutive world titles:

And the NFTs in Sagan’s collection are not exclusively bicycle-themed. The Slovak’s other interests are also represented, particularly his love of American muscle cars. Here’s one such NFT, inspired by stage 5 of the 2015 Tour of California:

And then there’s this anachronistic effort – entitled ‘Nature is Beautiful’ – which seems straight out of the 1980s, both in tone and treatment of the subject. Apparently “the shape of the woman’s body is the height line i [Sagan’s] power file” from stage 3 of Tour de Suisse 2015. Righto.

Sagan himself seems delighted with his new venture, judging by words attributed to him in a Fuerza press release.

“I love how my Fuerza NFTs have been able to capture not only some of my passions outside of cycling, but also blow me away with the creativity of taking my power data and turning it into art,” Sagan certainly didn’t say. time, or in any form. “So many of my pieces are just so beautiful and I’m excited to share these with my fans.”

But those fans? They are decidedly less enthusiastic. The tone of the comments on Sagan’s Facebook post announcing the NFT drop can best be described as “overwhelmingly negative”.

Here is a selection:

• “I am very pleased to announce that I am now no longer a fan.” – Val Notman

• “You’ve got to be kidding, haven’t you??? Totally bizarre nonsense and the fact that one of the biggest characters in cycling is promoting this is quite disappointing, to put it very, very mildly.” – Axel van Soest

• “Hey… then it’s the end of Sagan! “Jumped the Shark” – Graham Auld

• “Wow, you are 3 months late. No one is stupid enough to buy NFT anymore. The prices these are listed at are a SICK WATER ILLUSION.” -Dave Reid

What are these prices that Dave Reid mentions? I’m glad you asked.

The cheapest NFTs in Sagan’s collection are currently on sale for 2.3 ETH – around $3,600 USD at today’s prices. The Tour of California and “Nature is Beautiful” NFTs you saw above are both available for 7.5 ETH (US$11,950), while the Doha Worlds piece is 100 times that price: 750 ETH, or a cool US$1, 2 million. No, it’s not a typo.

Believe it or not, it’s not even the most expensive NFT in the Sagan collection. That honor belongs to a piece called “Champagne” inspired by Sagan’s first stage win in the Tour de France, in his first Tour, and his first day in the green jersey.

As with all pieces in the Sagan collection, purchasing this NFT gives you access to biometric data from that stage. But with this one you get more.

“The owner of this artwork will actually OWN this data, not just have a license to it,” according to Fuerza. “Along with this, [we] will also include lessons from [Fuerza founder] Hunter Allen for explaining the power file in depth, how to use the WKO software that best analyzes the data and is also available for the Fuerza experiences.”

Current price of ‘Champagne’ NFT? A positively exuberant 7,474 ETH. That’s about $11.9 million. Yes, you read that right. 11.9 million dollars.

A charitable explanation for this whole endeavor might be that Sagan (or more likely his management team) was approached by Fuerza and figured there was no harm in getting involved.

The work from their end would have been minimal: help suggest which races should be featured, send over some data files, then make a percentage of each NFT sold.

A less charitable explanation: Sagan et al. got greedy and jumped on the latest technology without realizing how poorly received NFTs have been in cycling (if not more generally).

Most people will not care about Sagan’s investment in the NFT space. A select few may be excited about the opportunity to pick up some Sagan-themed digital art. However, a good percentage would say that this investment has weakened Sagan’s reputation somewhat. As we’ve seen, he’s probably already lost some fans.

Who knows if any of that matters to Sagan. Perhaps this venture will prove lucrative enough for the 32-year-old that any setback will be inconsequential. But the early signs are not great. Since its launch on the OpenSea NFT marketplace in early July, Fuerza appears to have yet to receive an offer for even one of its 1,500 NFTs.