Yes, Major League Soccer Really ‘Signed’ Boring Monkey NFT as a ‘Digital Athlete’
The history of professional sports is littered with baffling and comically bad signings, from Bobby Bonilla’s seemingly immortal contract to Josh Smith’s terrible stint in Detroit to the entire New York Knicks of the mid-2000s. But Major League Soccer topped them all.
America’s top men’s soccer league announced the signing of a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT to a “professional contract” in an official press release on Friday. Dubbed the “Striker,” MLS hyped the signing as “the first digital athlete to sign with a professional sports organization” and promoted the NFT’s debut on the “virtual field” during Wednesday’s MLS All-Star Game.
The press release even included quotes from the algorithmically designed eyesore probably written by a bad PR intern:
“I am extremely excited to join Major League Soccer, the fastest growing sports league in North America. In a league with players from more than 82 countries, it is an honor to be the first digital athlete. I can’t wait to get on the virtual track.”
This “signing” appears to amount to little more than a licensing deal and/or marketing campaign aimed at hyping up MLS and its upcoming All-Star Game. MLS stated that Striker’s introduction was done in partnership with ge3, a division of online marketing firm Get Engaged, but ownership of BAYC #6045, the NFT representing Striker, is currently held by Get Engaged. Well, in a way.
According to blockchain records, BAYC #6045 currently resides in a wallet owned by Get Engaged, but the actual purchase of the NFT was completed by MoonPay. Yes, the same cryptocurrency payment platform responsible for the bull rush of celebrity NFT “purchases” and shaky promotion of NFT ownership perfectly encapsulated by Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon’s stylish exchange about their Bored Apes on The Tonight Show in January 2022.
MoonPay bought NFT for 100 Eth (about $250,000) on March 13, 2022 and transferred the digital asset to a wallet controlled by Get Engaged four days later and sat on it until Friday’s announcement of the partnership with MLS. The press release even mentions Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs’ proposed Web3 MMORPG The other side a little shoutout in his “Fast Facts” about Striker.
All of this information points to this “signing” representing little more than another attempt to promote NFT ownership through a household name, but this one comes as the NFT market, like major crypto markets, is in sharp decline. And that’s before you factor in the expected backlash for MLS “signing” something that literally amounts to little more than a smart contract.
“We really put the L in ml,” one Twitter user wrote Twitter account setup for Striker. “Major league fraud,” wrote another.
MLS “signing” an NFT also screams of not reading the room when juxtaposed against the current financial crisis experienced by the National Women’s Soccer League, thanks to crypto brokerage Voyager Digital filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July.
Voyager Digital became one of the league’s major sponsors in December 2021, with a portion of the sponsorship deal set aside for NWSL players to invest in cryptocurrencies traded on Voyager’s platform. The agreement was a sport laundering of crypto brokers and NFT developers via significant sponsorship deals that have increased in recent years. But Voyager’s deal with the NWSL and its subsequent bankruptcy filing presented an additional problem; NWSL players had crypto accounts that were never funded due to the bankruptcy.
The situation forced NWSL Players’ Association CEO Meghann Burke to publicly assure that no NWSL players would miss a paycheck.
MLS wants to have fun with its virtual player, but to do so at the same time another major Web3 player puts the top U.S. women’s soccer league under financial duress to the point that players could lose money is distasteful at best.
