Should the club start making NFTs?

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

No. If it’s shit.

Yes. If it’s good. All businesses should be looking to the blockchain and I expect season tickets will go that route.

If I have a £1000 NFT season ticket and I am allowed to sell two tickets a year, I can sell my United vs Liverpool ticket for £200. United could take a 20% cut. I earn through sacrifice and resale of my ‘asset’. United accepts and legalises touting amongst its members as they profit. The buyer pays a premium but has certainty that it’s legitimate. United could sure less than 5% of tickets were resold. Fan culture wins out. Match day experience isn’t diluted.

However…. We will do the shittest version possible. Not the good stuff. Because we like money more than fans.

 

[Eli Zee]

Well, in response to your first point, purchasing an NFT can and often does result in 'membership benefits'. There's no reason why United couldn't do something similar. You could either sell off rare NFTs that had special privileges to the highest bidder, or you could take a more egalitarian approach and assign special benefits to certain NFTs at random, so that it became a 'golden ticket' style lottery.

Secondly, we have already talked about the fact that humans are innately drawn to collect things. Your 'why wouldn't people just take a screenshot' is misguided...did you ever collect Panini stickers when you were a kid? If so, why did you bother buying packets of stickers in order to find the rare stickers you needed to complete your album? Why didn't you just make your own sticker, or take a photo/screenshot of a sticker? Why didn't you just go on eBay and buy all the stickers you needed?

Remember, as I said to another poster earlier, collecting is meant to be fun, and we don't have to take the extreme examples of NFTs going for hundreds of thousands of pounds and use those to rubbish the idea. I can definitely see a marketplace for fans to pay £5 for a 'packet' of NFTs, which can be stored in an digital album, with the objection being to collect them all.

I feel like some people are failing to understand perspective of others. Just because you might not be into collecting, doesn't mean others wouldn't be.

NFT's could be used in many cool ways, yes, but if they are going to offer people special benefits for having one, why not just sell benefits packages instead? Not everyone would want to collect an NFT either.

I mean sure, go for it, make it awesome. I'm not against it. I just think it would be kind of pointless as whatever the club would decide to do with it may already be doable. For example, the "golden ticket" idea could just be a raffle every ticket purchaser is entered into. But maybe I'm wrong

 

[arnie_ni]

Sticker books abs baseball cards etc will all be NFTs in years to come

 

[Lentwood]

NFT's could be used in many cool ways, yes, but if they are going to offer people special benefits for having one, why not just sell benefits packages instead? Not everyone would want to collect an NFT either.

I mean sure, go for it, make it awesome. I'm not against it. I just think it would be kind of pointless as whatever the club would decide to do with it may already be doable. For example, the "golden ticket" idea could just be a raffle every ticket purchaser is entered into. But maybe I'm wrong

You could just raffle off prizes for people who buy tickets, sure, but I think that's slightly different to what's being discussed here, which is really about collectables with potential benefits for owners.

If it was me, I would say, for example, we are going to mint 9994 NFTs for each of our squad members next season, with six 'rare' NFTs of each of our squad member, which are slightly different by some design feature.

I would attach some kind of prize or benefit to owning one of these NFTs, so if you have a rare Pogba or Ronaldo NFT, you get to participate in a live Q&A with them over Teams (for example) or you get to meet them at Carrington, watch them train for a while and then go for lunch in one of the executive suites at OT.

Now, I would say three of these rare NFTs, per player, are going to go to auction on a site like OpenSea. There, people could bid against each other to own the token. I am sure if you offered a prize like a Q&A with Ronaldo and lunch with him, the bidding would go into the tens/hundreds of thousands.

At the same time, I would put the other three tokens into random 'packs' of the NFTs, so fans could pay £5 per pack A) with the aim of collecting all of the squad members and B) be in with a chance of finding one of the rare NFTs.

Now, why do this as an NFT project (before people ask). Well, of course, you could do this in many different ways, but what I like about doing this with NFTs is that, since ownership of the token can be proved definitively and the Blockchain infrastructure naturally allows for trading/moving of assets, then we have the perfect mini-marketplace to enable swapping, selling and buying of NFTs.

Imagine if you 'packed' (as the kids say) a rare NFT Ronaldo as a fan. You could then choose...do I myself take up the prize...or do I sell it to the highest bidder on OpenSea? This could either be a kids dream day out or pay for their first home!

I just think it all adds an element of fun, traceability and transparency to the process. Yes, it's not the ONLY way, but it's fun and efficient, and appeals to younger fans who are already used to buying, selling and trading digital assets online.

 

[Scholsey2004]

Should we start a scam? No.

 

[sect2k]

So, your argument is that, through their own volition, PwC and Deloitte set-up entire divisions to cater for the sale, implementation and support of an unnecessary technology, which offers no benefits to business, purely with the attitude of 'well, we'll sell it to idiots'?

I have no desire to convert people into Blockchain disciples, I really don't care to be honest. I just find it strange that Blockchain is such a polarising topic. I don't understand why people who claim they don't care or see it as pointless feel the need to pop-up and comment, and not really take the time to actually understand it, beyond the media headlines.

If United want to mint NFTs and people want to buy them, so what?

You don't know why it's a polarizing topic? Seriously, at this point you're either trolling, 10 years old or your name is Kruger, Dunning Kruger. Bye.

 

[Teja]

There's a company that's doing LaLiga NFT player cards and Grizemann has been shilling it quite a bit.

https://www.espn.com/soccer/spanish...zmann-as-investor-and-gerard-pique-as-adviser

It'll happen at a league level if it does and we'll just get into some sort of licensing agreement. I imagine you'll get into the same pokemon card / FUT type situation where the league "issues" NFT packs and we have OTC trading.

 

[NoLogo]

Oh great we are going into the business of scamming people now? Awesome.

Seriously if you are an artist who makes something unique and sells it as an NFT with clear ownership of a digital piece of art going to someone else I can see the value. Everything else is just a scam.

 

[Classical Mechanic]

Andrea Agnelli is going to be all over this.

 

[Bosws87]

Jump on board, all for taking foolish peoples money.

 

[Scholsey2004]

I think some people in here have fallen into a pyramid scheme

Dodgy timeshares out, NFT's in.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

Should we start a scam? No.

You don’t understand what it is.

The equivalent would be arguing against alcohol being sold at the ground based on absinthe consumption.

NFT’s are not really about digital art. At all.

I’ve given a very easily digestible example a few posts up. I’ve also (probably) written off NFT’s as nonsense on this very site within the last 12 months. I was wrong. They have real world implications.

 

[BayernFan87]

Funny how this topic is hunting me.

I work as a software developer and I'm very close to quit my job, start a business with two friends and develop a NFT platform in the vein of sorare.com. But of course much, much better


If you don't understand NFTs yet, it's basically very simple: NFTs declare ownership of a digital asset (pictures, music, videos, video game, video game assets, ...) and thus allow trading, that's it.
You can also combine these digital assets with real life benefits. For example the band Kings of Leon sold NFTs that will act as some kind of concert ticket.

Do some people use NFTs for scams? Yes.
But the same applies for cryptocurrencies and the internet as a whole. That doesn't mean that the whole technology is a scam and can't be used to do something good.

Is the NFT market some kind of bubble? Yes, i think so, at least for these stupid auto-generated comic apes, bears and whatnot. Just take a look at this: https://opensea.io/assets
18 million NFT comics. This destroys part of the attraction of NFTs, meant to be rare and a bit exclusive.
So I expect a decline regarding these kind of NFTs, but not concerning "high quality" and really exclusive NFTs.
Maybe the NFT market will have it's "dot com bubble" aquivalent, but that didn't hurt the internet at all in the long run.


To quote the last few slides of my pitch for investors:

1998: "The internet will not be a success"

2005: "Why should people use these social media platforms?"

2011: "Bitcoin will never be accepted or worth more than a few cent"

2013: "Netflix will not succeed, why should people just stream what they can instead own as DVDs?"

2021: "NFTs are a scam and won't last"

Don't be late this time

 

[moses]

The dying gasps of late stage capitalism.

 

[Lentwood]

You don't know why it's a polarizing topic? Seriously, at this point you're either trolling, 10 years old or your name is Kruger, Dunning Kruger. Bye.

Now you're just being rude. I humoured your questions yesterday, and answered them in detail, because I thought you might be up for a sensible debate, but clearly not.

You're not going to get accepted as a full member by popping up and sniping at people

 

[Sauxees Moi Hui]

10,000 generative NFTs of past great United players. Attributes include the kits they actually wore, various trophies they actually won, different types of sneakers, United-related backgrounds. Officially sponsored by United, with community events and giveaways for holders. Built on the Solana blockchain. They would sell like hotcakes.

 

[afrocentricity]

Thread is on the way to meeting my expectations...

 

[sect2k]

Now you're just being rude. I humoured your questions yesterday, and answered them in detail, because I thought you might be up for a sensible debate, but clearly not.

No, just real, and no there is no sensible debate with members of crypto and adjacent cults. Like I said, if you can't fathom why this topic is so polarizing then you clearly lack the cognitive capacity to actually carry out a meaningful discussion.

You're not going to get accepted as a full member by popping up and sniping at people

This here is the crux, acceptance, at the core, crypto is about lonely man looking to belong, NFTs especially so.


Finally, let me leave you with a thought from a late Billy Hicks, he was talking about advertisers, but if he were alive, I'm sure he'd be saying something similar about people in crypto.

You are Satan’s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fecked and you are fecking us. Kill yourself. It’s the only way to save your fecking soul. Kill yourself

There’s no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fecking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don’t care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fecking machinations.

You scum-bags! Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fecking thing on this planet.

Over and out.

 

[Lentwood]

Thread is on the way to meeting my expectations...

See above...no "on the way" about it now!

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

Funny how this topic is hunting me.

I work as a software developer and I'm very close to quit my job, start a business with two friends and develop a NFT platform in the vein of sorare.com. But of course much, much better


If you don't understand NFTs yet, it's basically very simple: NFTs declare ownership of a digital asset (pictures, music, videos, video game, video game assets, ...) and thus allow trading, that's it.
You can also combine these digital assets with real life benefits. For example the band Kings of Leon sold NFTs that will act as some kind of concert ticket.

Do some people use NFTs for scams? Yes.
But the same applies for cryptocurrencies and the internet as a whole. That doesn't mean that the whole technology is a scam and can't be used to do something good.

Is the NFT market some kind of bubble? Yes, i think so, at least for these stupid auto-generated comic apes, bears and whatnot. Just take a look at this: https://opensea.io/assets
18 million NFT comics. This destroys part of the attraction of NFTs, meant to be rare and a bit exclusive.
So I expect a decline regarding these kind of NFTs, but not concerning "high quality" and really exclusive NFTs.
Maybe the NFT market will have it's "dot com bubble" aquivalent, but that didn't hurt the internet at all in the long run.


To quote the last few slides of my pitch for investors:

Bold underlined italics = wrong

 

[Redfrog]

It's basically a digital...something (an image, a video clip, etc.) that is registered and certified as being unique.

I take a picture of my cat doing an impersonation of Elvis (not that Elvis) - and then go to through the proper procedure for uploading and registering it (thus making it unique and so forth).

I then become insanely famous (by posting random crap on YouTube) - and people will now be willing to buy the picture (meaning - buying the "certificate" which proves they own the "original" and not a copy) for loads and loads of money.

Well, people should read Plato instead of buying crap for insane money. They’ll understand they are buying copies of the copies of the copies anyway…
Wait, I only read a copy of Plato, where can I buy the « original » ? Feck, I am not Plato anyway, only a stupid dude on the internet. I should delete myself.

I have no hope for human kind when I am learning stuff like that exist…

 

[BayernFan87]

Bold underlined italics = wrong

Care to explain?
It's of course a simplified ELI5 explanation.

 

[Murder on Zidane's Floor]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[afrocentricity]

See above...no "on the way" about it now!

Baffles me mate... but then the reaction to VR and AR was quite ferocious a few years ago and that seems to have calmed down once people started to learn about it, get there hands on, and dispel the myths....... There's hope yet.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

Care to explain?
It's of course a simplified ELI5 explanation.

Ignore digital. An NFT is just an absolute point of documented ownership.

Fast forward a decade and every single ticket for anything will be on the blockchain. I used the example of a season ticket further up. I’ll go again and pretend that you’re an Arsenal fan.

I buy a United season ticket for £1000. 19 matches. I cant go (or don’t want to go) to the home match against Arsenal. I can sell that portion of my asset for £1 or £1000. If it’s the last game of the season and Arsenal can clinch the league there, maybe I sell it for £500. Perhaps the club caps resale at £200 a seat. Maybe they take 1% of resale, maybe 50%. However those scales slide, bringing tickets onto a certified bullet proof platform, with a win-win-win model is unignorable. I get 50% of my outlay back. The club scrapes a percentage. You get a fully verified route to see you’re team win the league.

This is just one small application of NFT’s and the blockchain in meatworld. There are thousands of real applications.

Don’t get caught up in the discourse around people paying money for Gifs and Jpegs. That’s the equivalent of people paying 1 Bitcoin for a pizza a decade ago. It’s noise. Irrelevant.

The future is within the blockchain. It’s not some weird esoteric ideal. It’s simple and easy to digest. In 2030+ your car insurance, your degree, your house deed, decree absolute… all NFT’s. It’s not anything special. It’s just a verifiable undeletable record.

 

[The Siege]

Yes. Take people's money and buy the club more things or improve the existing things. You'd create things that have no actual historical significance, but have significance greatly because it was created by the club, at a very low cost.

 

[Ted Lasso]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

I laughed too...at the lack of creativity / ability of the tweeter to think outside his comfort level of where technology is headed.

You can take a photograph of the Mona Lisa and put it up on your desktop or even sell a print for a few bucks. But it is not the Mona Lisa and will never be worth the same.

It's a shame that people resort to ridicule of things they don't truly comprehend. Is it shameful to acknowledge naivety, ask questions and learn?

 

[Sauxees Moi Hui]

Two more things that people don't understand:

1. People buy things all the time that have no real-world use except to serve as status symbols. Look at luxury watches that sell for tens of thousands of dollars. They can be used to tell the time, but no one really buys them for THAT. Also, you can buy replica watches for one-tenth of the price (it's like right-clicking on a JPEG and saving it), but that doesn't stop people from buying the real thing. In our increasingly digital universe, NFTs can be used as status symbols.

2. Speaking of an increasingly digital universe, imagine rolling through the metaverse in the very near future with a Crypto Punk NFT avatar worth $1 million. People will pay attention. This is all coming your way faster than you can imagine.

There is also a post above about concentration and "oligarchy" in NFT trading. Uh-huh. There are lots of people out there who trade NFTs in the marketplace, just like some others trade stocks.

This is not to say that EVERY NFT is great and has value. But completely dismissing NFTs is unwise, IMO - and that's before one even begins to consider the real-world uses that have already been described by others very well in this thread.

 

[sect2k]

Two more things that people don't understand:

1. People buy things all the time that have no real-world use except to serve as status symbols. Look at luxury watches that sell for tens of thousands of dollars. They can be used to tell the time, but no one really buys them for THAT. Also, you can buy replica watches for one-tenth of the price (it's like right-clicking on a JPEG and saving it), but that doesn't stop people from buying the real thing. In our increasingly digital universe, NFTs can be used as status symbols.

2. Speaking of an increasingly digital universe, imagine rolling through the metaverse in the very near future with a Crypto Punk NFT avatar worth $1 million. People will pay attention. This is all coming your way faster than you can imagine.

There is also a post above about concentration and "oligarchy" in NFT trading. Uh-huh. There are lots of people out there who trade NFTs in the marketplace, just like some others trade stocks.

I wonder how sad and unfufiled your life must be, for that to be a desirable future. I'm sure there is someone out there to love you, without the need to walk around with a million dollar jpeg and I for one wish you find that happines in the real world, not a make believe one.

 

[weizxx]

Absolutely not as most of them are pump and dump type schemes and fans have the potential to lose thousands of pounds on these things.

No way should United be releasing stuff like this. If I ever saw Gary Vee promoting a Rooney overhead kick Vs city NFT, that would be it for me.

This!

 

[Mufc8282]

Surely united should have a crypto coin by now? I know a lot of other clubs are getting them

 

[BayernFan87]

Ignore digital. An NFT is just an absolute point of documented ownership.

Fast forward a decade and every single ticket for anything will be on the blockchain. I used the example of a season ticket further up. I’ll go again and pretend that you’re an Arsenal fan.

I buy a United season ticket for £1000. 19 matches. I cant go (or don’t want to go) to the home match against Arsenal. I can sell that portion of my asset for £1 or £1000. If it’s the last game of the season and Arsenal can clinch the league there, maybe I sell it for £500. Perhaps the club caps resale at £200 a seat. Maybe they take 1% of resale, maybe 50%. However those scales slide, bringing tickets onto a certified bullet proof platform, with a win-win-win model is unignorable. I get 50% of my outlay back. The club scrapes a percentage. You get a fully verified route to see you’re team win the league.

This is just one small application of NFT’s and the blockchain in meatworld. There are thousands of real applications.

Don’t get caught up in the discourse around people paying money for Gifs and Jpegs. That’s the equivalent of people paying 1 Bitcoin for a pizza a decade ago. It’s noise. Irrelevant.

The future is within the blockchain. It’s not some weird esoteric ideal. It’s simple and easy to digest. In 2030+ your car insurance, your degree, your house deed, decree absolute… all NFT’s. It’s not anything special. It’s just a verifiable undeletable record.

I agree with everything you said.
But these are the mid- and long term applications.

 

[Sauxees Moi Hui]

I wonder how sad and unfufiled your life must be, for that to be a desirable future. I'm sure there is someone out there to love you, without the need to walk around with a million dollar jpeg and I for one wish you find that happines in the real world, not a make believe one.

My life is great, thanks. Anyway, it's not about what I want or what you want. It's about what objectively will happen.

 

[antohan]

Ignore digital. An NFT is just an absolute point of documented ownership.

Fast forward a decade and every single ticket for anything will be on the blockchain. I used the example of a season ticket further up. I’ll go again and pretend that you’re an Arsenal fan.

I buy a United season ticket for £1000. 19 matches. I cant go (or don’t want to go) to the home match against Arsenal. I can sell that portion of my asset for £1 or £1000. If it’s the last game of the season and Arsenal can clinch the league there, maybe I sell it for £500. Perhaps the club caps resale at £200 a seat. Maybe they take 1% of resale, maybe 50%. However those scales slide, bringing tickets onto a certified bullet proof platform, with a win-win-win model is unignorable. I get 50% of my outlay back. The club scrapes a percentage. You get a fully verified route to see you’re team win the league.

This is just one small application of NFT’s and the blockchain in meatworld. There are thousands of real applications.

Don’t get caught up in the discourse around people paying money for Gifs and Jpegs. That’s the equivalent of people paying 1 Bitcoin for a pizza a decade ago. It’s noise. Irrelevant.

The future is within the blockchain. It’s not some weird esoteric ideal. It’s simple and easy to digest. In 2030+ your car insurance, your degree, your house deed, decree absolute… all NFT’s. It’s not anything special. It’s just a verifiable undeletable record.

Good on you and @Lentwood to take the trouble to explain in terms of use cases closer to real life. It's far easier to take the piss.

I for one couldn't wrap my head around it at all with the reported multimillion dollar deals and sure have been tempted to post green smileys at some of the botched MS Paint jobs. Read about Dorsey's first tweet recently and I could see someone with too much money wanting to own it but it still all looks pretty mad to me. I can literally see it online any time I want to.

Speaking of missing the point with crazy tech stuff. Not sure about your Netflix 2013 reference as it was a slam dunk by then. You should really go back to Blockbuster turning them down, although I can see why you wouldn't.

I started renting Netflix DVDs about 15 years ago and by the time I got into buying/selling stocks I naively thought it was such a no-brainer that it all had to be "priced in" and have been sat on that logic since. In fairness, people get paid stupid money to know better than me and most of them clearly didn't, so why should I?

Got Apple instead at $98 (another display of market madness, why would people stop buying smartphones because banks had made dodgy loans?). They split 7x and 4x since so it's like going in at $3.5 relative to current shares.

Back to Netflix, by 2013 I was still (wrongly) sure I had missed the boat so decided not to dismiss stuff I couldn't quite wrap my head around. Had seen some chaps here going on about mining bitcoins, so when I found a "for dummies" way to buy/sell/transfer from/to bank I stuck a grand on it. 8 coins at some point in 2013 (off the top of my head, could have been 1 or 20, was batshit how it seesawed). I know, first no Netflix, then a stingy 1K, I'm such a car crash But then, I still don't understand it, don't have a wallet or the foggiest idea about how to use them other than sell $x and transfer it to a bank so 1K was the sensible choice. Still holding on to 5, so not bad as far as total return is concerned.

Anyhow, just feedback and thanks, I'm certainly not buying some jpeg thing but will keep an eye out for this. Good luck with your startup, enjoy the ride.