1 Billion Views Yet Facebook Only Paid Out $378. Why We’re Going All-In On NFTs
Footbolé is the GOAT of football virals with north of 1 billion views across social media and messaging platforms. Here CEO Derek Wanner speaks about why shifting the direction of the business to include NFTs and the metaverse was a no-brainer.
One of my favourite subreddits is called aged like milk. It’s a depository of quotes, articles, posters, posts, ideas and inventions that failed the test of time to such a degree that they became unintentional comedy. With that in mind, I’m still prepared to make a bold pronouncement on a subject that a lot of naysayers consider something of a joke — that topic being the future of non-fungible tokens (aka NFTs). Only time will tell whether the text below will age like milk or like fine wine but, as far as Footbolé is concerned, we’ve seen the future and are more than prepared to put it all on the line for it…
NFTs are here to stay. Not only that, NFTs will become so commonplace in our increasingly digitised society that it’s only a matter of time until you will own one yourself (assuming you don’t have a collection of NFTs already). One day NFTs will become bigger than any one industry because of the inevitability of Web 3.0 and because anything that can be put on the blockchain can effectively be an NFT. At that point, they will no longer be a product category but a means of exchanging digital value. (I just got an NFT of xyz will become part of your vocabulary).
NFTs are one of the most polarising topics in business right now because a lot of people can’t get beyond the headlines… “Someone paid how much for a GIF!?!?”. Now I’m not going to pretend I didn’t do a Scooby-Doo face when I first saw how much some people are prepared to pay for a Cryptopunk (the average price is $30,412 and the rarest punk recently fetched an eye watering $11.7m), but the more I looked under the hood the more things seemed to follow a perfect logic.
People have been collecting things since the dawn of time and the more we move towards a fully digitised society the more we’ll value and covet digital assets — especially ones that connote status and scarcity.
Now, the purpose of this piece isn’t to make the case for NFTs as much as it is to explain why we, as a company, are embracing them to such a degree. If you think we’re chancers chasing a quick buck, then clearly you don’t know the struggles we’ve endured to keep Footbolé alive -while at the same time preserving its integrity- in a business environment that treats static and short form digital content as disposable. Creators of all stripes have been underpinned by a broken economic model for so long that NFTs are like the proverbial White Knight, saving us from doing it strictly for the LOLs, shares & Likes.
Case in point Footbolé, we’ve entertained hundreds of millions of football fans around the world with our unique brand of fearless football content (one billion views and counting) and established a reputation as the GOAT of football virals in the process — yet we couldn’t even take our team for a fancy dinner out on the town with the money we’ve made from Facebook. No matter where you fall on the NFT divide, you can admit there’s something not right with that.
That brings me back to what it was about NFTs that attracted me in the first place. It was incredibly invigorating and inspiring to suddenly see internet art being treated no differently than physical art. Beeple is a perfect — albeit extreme — example of this. For 13 years he essentially did content for free (ie. for LOLs, Likes & Shares), uploading new art every day without fail to his Instagram and other social channels. Both a genius and prolific. Yet the most he ever sold an art print for was $100 and did he see a penny in ad money from Instagram? Nope. Then along came NFTs and the rest, as they say, is history…
One of the many virtues of NFTs is that they will enable artists, musicians, photographers, film makers, digital creators, image manipulators, bloggers, vloggers and anyone who puts their neck above the digital parapet to monetise their creations… This isn’t to say that NFTs will prove to be the golden egg laying goose for every artist and every art piece. Finding an audience that appreciates your art is still key, but that’s no different than the physical art world. In that sense, it’s the ultimate meritocracy underpinned by a decentralised, democratised framework that is censor free and operates without centralised control.
The promise is for a much fairer future for digital artists and creators. And that is why we’re so ready to dive into the future headfirst.
About Footbolé
Footbolé is the home of fearless football with over 1 billion views and 2.8 million followers across social media. Footbolé is now embracing NFTs and the metaverse as its future direction. You can follow our intrepid adventures here.
https://www.facebook.com/fcfootbole
https://www.tiktok.com/@footbole
https://www.instagram.com/footbole
Serious about football NFTs?
We’re creating a platform agnostic media channel called Never Full Time that will strictly and exhaustively be up on the football NFT beat. From Sorare to RealFvr to projects of our own, our goal is for Never Full Time to become NFT-loving football fans’ spiritual home.
