Original source: fast company
In an NFT market of around $30 billion, Autograph is leveraging celebrity connections to build communities.
Tom Brady's much-hyped celebrity NFT agency, Autograph, launched in August 2021. In April, the company signed a multi-year agreement with ESPN to produce NFTs for it.
(Tom Brady is the first person in NFL history: from 2000 to 2020, Brady played for the New England Patriots for 20 seasons, leading the team to the Super Bowl 9 times, lifting the Lombardi Cup 6 times, being elected Super Bowl MVP 4 times, and being elected the NFL regular season MVP 3 times, ranking first in history in many statistics, and the New England Patriots led by Brady also became the best team in the first 20 years or even history of the 21st century.) ）
At an invite-only Discord conference in March, about 600 members participated in the Autograph discussion, ostensibly to get an idea of the latest NFT delivery, but most of the inquiries were more personal, what was the best touchdown score, and what made a person successful.
Chat host, Autograph co-founder and CEO Dillon Rosenblatt, asked some NFT-specific questions about their crypto collection. What makes them different? "It's not just two players on a card," Gronk said, "it's a connection we've made in 12 years." "
"We will create the most unique NFT experience in the world," Brady added.
Autograph is part of a growing celebrity NFT ecosystem that includes Paris Hilton, Quentin Tarantino, Lindsay Rohan, Stephen Curry, and LeBron James.
To be sure, a failed NFT project could wreak havoc on celebrities' reputations, not to mention the ever-present ethical issue of urging their fan base to make high-risk purchases, but many seem willing to take the risk. Sports NFTs, in particular, have attracted a large following — in April 2021, McKinsey surveyed 2,500 U.S. consumers aged 18-65, and it is estimated that 0.5%-1% of U.S. adults have purchased sports NFTs, while Vancouver-based Dapper Labs, the official market for the NBA and NFL, earned $100 million in 2021.
"Sports fans are interested in collectibles, and investing in purely digital collectibles isn't hard for them to grasp," said Yash Patel, general partner at Telstra Ventures, "who invests in esports and web 3.0 companies, and most celebrities really understand the value of collectibles because they're collectibles themselves."
Autograph's vision was dreamed up in the bedroom of 23-year-old Dillon Rosenblatt, thanks to his collection of middle school football and basketball cards, as well as a touch of old-fashioned nepotism. Rosenblatt's "collecting fetish" has resurfaced during the pandemic, coupled with his interest in web 3.0, it feels like sports NFTs are a clear trend.
"I'm very excited about the potential of digital assets," he said during the Zoom conference.
He did some research and then presented his concept to his father, media mogul Richard Rosenblatt, the CEO of Intermix, a company owned by Newscorp, along with their longtime family friend Tom Brady. "In my lifetime, I've collated hundreds of submissions," he said. In 2015, as a sophomore in high school in Los Angeles, he co-founded a now-defunct Uber-for-tutors app with a friend.
"I told Brady and my father that with this new technology we can create a new era of collecting," he said.
With Brady involved, Rosenblatt invited a number of key players, including Autograph's advisory team of Senior Vice President Eddy Cue, tennis star Naomi Osaka, DraftKings co-founders Jason Robbins and Paul Lieberman, and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Peter Guber.
Rosenblatt said Autograph's unique selling point is that their NFTs are individually signed, and his team couriered iPads with proprietary apps to Autograph celebrities, who then wrote down their signatures in Apple pencils. "It takes them hours," Rosenblatt says, "and he thinks the time is worth it — the NFTs collectors receive far more personally than the mass-produced signed posters.
Autograph has also taken a number of other key steps to make NFTs accessible to more people. Its partnership with DraftKings allows customers to purchase NFTs using credit cards. Compared with other NFTs, its price is also relatively affordable. Autograph sold 5,000 Tom Brady NFTs for $12 a piece. Rosenblatt said: "We could have charged more, but the focus was on creating a mass experience. "
Events like Tom Brady and Grank's Discord Chat are intentionally designed to promote community buying and engagement. This will bring fans closer to their idols.
To maintain this comfortable chat atmosphere, Rosenblatt said he had a choice of celebrities who passed the review. "We reject so many more people than we do, both personally and from an intellectual property perspective, and he needs stars who are willing to engage and develop their own communities," he said. Celebrities are long-term partners in the community, not just using Autograph as a platform for sale. A wide variety of stars agreed to their terms, including Simon Byers, Naomi Osaka and Usain Bolt. The NFT with Tiger Woods and NBA stars is underway.
Rosenblatt said sports stars are easy to work with, thanks to Brady's influence and his personal relationships with clients.
But the drawbacks of NFTs are rarely mentioned, and prices have flattened out since last year. In March, the F1 Delta Time racing game, which sold the game's Formula One NFT, was shut down, making all NFTs worthless and highlighting the instability of this space. "It's a completely speculative market," said James Wo, CEO of blockchain investment firm DFG, "and there are a lot of NFTs that are very immature." "
Still, celebrity NFTs still have a competitive advantage, Patel said: "They've entered the wave of hype, they're NFT community ambassadors, which is more advantageous than being a traditional brand spokesperson." "
Rosenblatt expanded from sports to the wider entertainment and music scene. Over the past year, his staff in Los Angeles has grown from 4 to 60. "From today onwards, you're going to see an exponential increase in the number of people who buy and own cryptocurrencies and NFTs in their lives," he said. "