Taylor Swift had talks with imploded crypto group FTX about NFT ticket scheme

Taylor Swift was reportedly in talks with FTX — a Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange in the midst of bankruptcy — just months before the company collapsed.

As reported by Financial TimesFTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried had reached “the late stages of negotiations” with Swift, and wanted to enlist the singer in a sponsorship campaign tied to an upcoming tour of hers (probably the “Eras” tour that Swift recently announced).

The deal, worth more than $100m (£820,550), is said to have included a scheme to have concert tickets minted as NFTs, similar to the Coachella Key effort in which FTX was also involved. It would have followed a number of the company’s other high-profile sponsorship deals, including those with sports stars such as Tom Brady, Shaquille O’Neal and Steph Curry.

According to sources who have spoken to Financial TimesBankman-Fried was enthusiastic about a deal with Swift because he was a known fan of hers – as was chief executive Claire Watanabe, who is said to have been “a driving force behind the pursuit of Swift”.

The prospect was reportedly less favored by other executives – including FTX USA president Brett Harrison – with an unnamed source saying: “Nobody really liked the deal. It was too expensive from the start. [The price was] really high. It’s ahead of the prices of the football jersey.”

An unnamed former employee of FTX is said to have expressed concern that Swift “would not add value to [the company’s] user base”, while a third source involved told the publication that Swift “did not want, and did not accept, an endorsement deal”.

FTX was launched in 2019 by Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang, and by July 2021 had become the world’s third largest crypto exchange with more than a million users. The company started refueling at the beginning of November this year, after it was reported by CoinDesk that Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, Alameda Research, held much of its assets in FTX’s proprietary FTT currency.

Days after the report was published, The Wall Street Journal reported that $10bn (£8.21bn) in cryptoassets were taken out of FTX users’ accounts to fund Alameda’s trading – an activity banned by FTX’s own terms of service. The company declared bankruptcy on November 11, with executives citing a “severe liquidity crisis”.

In the wake of FTX’s collapse, many users reported being unable to access their crypto holdings – including NFTs such as Coachella Keys. These lifetime passes to Coachella were valued at a total of $1.5 million USD (£1.2 million), but as of last month, these are frozen on the now-defunct FTX blockchain.

Tickets for Swift’s ‘Eras’ tour have been tumultuous without FTX’s involvement; when the tickets went on sale last month, Ticketmaster was swamped by “historically unprecedented demand,” leading to excruciating wait times, website outages and hyper-inflated prices on resale sites (including Ticketmaster’s own). Ticket sales were then closed down completely.

The controversy led US lawmakers to call for an investigation into Ticketmaster, while a Senate-backed antitrust panel has organized a hearing into the lack of competition in the ticketing industry. In addition, two US senators have called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to answer for the “steps” it is taking to “combat the use and operation of robots in the electronic ticketing market”.

Swift’s fans have also launched their own effort to protest Ticketmaster, with about three dozen of them — who are mostly lawyers — launching an initiative called “Vigilante Legal.” Last week, a group of fans also filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster, claiming the company violated two laws — the California Cartwright Act and the California Unfair Competition Law — during its “verified fan” presale.