Decentralized finance projects are changing the world - right here, right now. Payments, borrowing & lending, digital arts & collectibles - a list of industries disrupted by blockchain expand almost daily.
At the same time, there is one industry that still has no successful DeFi projects - though it is close-to-perfect for creating it.
It is a professional sport.
No, we are not talking about NBA Top Shots NFT craze - as it is actually not a sport, but a merchandise trade. Tokenization of merch & ticket sales, ad spaces, even sport-related experiences (like a dinner with a sports star) expands quite well.
But can we tokenize the core of any sports - athletes and their careers?
While in team sports it looks more problematic because of a too complex structure of any sports team, for individual sports like tennis, golf, or track & field the answer is - YES.
Furthermore, it is quite simple and obvious - so I really wonder why this Web 3.0. niche is still not filled with a quality project (with a soon-to-appear multi-million market cap :).
I am a professional tennis player, playing pro tournaments for almost 5 years. I am also a crypto enthusiast and hobby investor. Mixing experience and knowledge obtained from these two sides of my life, I can definitely say - successful tokenization of pro athletes’ careers is actually “a marriage made in heaven” as the whole concept looks very clear, logical and transparent.
Let me explain, using professional female tennis (what else?) as an example.
There are around 1000 active pro female tennis players in the world.
While higher-ranked 100-150 of them are “matured businesses”, usually signed by huge sports management agencies like IMG, the rest 850-900 are basically ventures. Or - tokens.
The best thing in the whole concept is that any player’s performance is completely transparent. Prize money information is public. The players results are too. So any investor can follow the situation with his investment (token he purchased) with almost 100% transparency.
Imagine that a tennis player Mary Doe issued & sold 50,000 tokens priced $1.00 each, backed by 20% of her prize money.
This player uses proceeds from token placement for better trainings, rehabilitation, tournament travels etc. Then Mary travels to Roland Garros and win $100,000. 20% of this sum will be distributed among token holders as payouts (dividends) - with her token keeps being traded, so owners can expect next payouts.
Furthermore, tokens of different players can be bought & sold during the tournament - if player wins matches (so we expect higher payouts), tokens price rises, if lost - decreases.
The funniest thing is to trade one token against other. How many “Rafael Nadals” one “Roger Federer” cost? Can you buy 1 “Serena Williams” for 2 “Maria Sharapova”? Time will tell.
I searched through Web 3.0. but have not found any project that attempted to use a viable business model for pro athletes careers tokenization.
Hope this will change soon, with skilled & dynamic investor-developer team enters this space - to disrupt pro sports, just like NFTs disrupt digital art & collectibles.
Feel free to contact me - if I can be of any help.
