The sports industry has similarities to the music industry: it’s ruled by a few prominent actors that centralize most of the power, influence, and revenue. However, we are talking about independent music artists making big money from NFTs. So, could we imagine NFTs disrupting this old sports industry too?

Professional leagues and sports teams are already leveraging their influence through NFTs and fan tokens - NBA top shot and Chiliz, for example. And professional players are also already using their image to earn extra revenue thanks to NFTs - Sorare, Ethernity, and the likes.

Those projects are branded as a way to strengthen links between athletes and fans. People are incentivized to buy those items to own a share of the influence and get involved in their favorite team's decisions. In practice, it’s more of a speculative investment: people buy those tokens on centralized exchanges where they can’t even use the governance power of their purchase.

As of now, blockchain-based items don’t enhance the fan experience.

We could even affirm that what was supposed to bring fans and athletes closer is making them farther than ever by reinforcing the position of central entities - federations, leagues, and clubs.

What a paradox, right?

To be a professional athlete doesn’t mean to play in a professional league anymore.

Thanks to social media, many athletes who didn’t make it the “old” way still make money, sometimes more than any professional league player. Through these new communication channels, they can efficiently leverage their image, get sponsors and earn a decent paycheck.

One could say that this new way of success promotes mediocrity by allowing anyone with good branding to shine through the prism of a sport without having the skills required. But, it would be underestimating the proportion of highly skilled athletes that didn’t achieve their dreams.

Since science highlights that success is a perfect blend between luck and hard work (Veritasium released a brilliant video about this), being a revenue-based-on-social-media athlete could appear as a second opportunity to shine and live from their passion. A way to surpass their lack of luck, maybe.

To go even further, this paradigm shift is also an excellent way to reshuffle the cards between different kinds of athletes. Indeed, the sports industry is a sector where social reproduction, in the sense of Bourdieu, is low - but does exist.

Athletes’ sons have a closer link with sports facilities and know the inner working - the best academy and agents - of this sector, so it’s “easier” for them to succeed. As I said, this advantage is pretty low in sports (7% in the French football league), but this new way to earn money thanks to your sports excellence and your branding on social media should be seen as an opportunity to offer a way out to athletes that don’t come from a family who know the code.

There are no more excuses acceptable for saying that classical professional leagues are the private turf of privileged athletes’ sons; you can bypass those codes with your iPhone.

Thus, WEB2 helped a wider selection of athletes to achieve their dreams - and in some way, made sports fairer.

But it’s still incomplete - in my opinion.

WEB2 allows them to extract value from their image, not directly from their sport and performance.

They need to create value from derivatives - merchandise, sponsors - that divert them from the objective to perform.

WEB3 could be the optimal solution to align interests between athletes and fans.

Imagine a world where independent athletes extract financial value directly from their community to compete in those leagues - no more need to extract value from derived product placements that cost them time and energy. An NFT sale suits well here - it’s the easier way to widely and openly raise funds. As a fan, you would be helping them to perform in better conditions and get a cut on their revenue if they succeed. You would be directly involved in their journey. In a nutshell, fans' and athletes’ interests would be fully aligned.

We don’t think it will create filthy rich athletes, far from it.

It would provide financial stability, freedom, and community all in one go, so what this does is create a sports industry middle class.

And actually, it would be a massive breakthrough in one of the more unequal industries: indeed, the gap between 0.001% of super-rich athletes and all the others is wider than in every other industry. Maybe we soon will witness the rise of those independent and crowd-funded athletes and see them compete - and defeat, who knows? - against traditional athletes in those classical professional leagues.

By the way, those professional leagues and teams have long been influential in the sports industry because they provide athletes with high salaries, high-level training, mass distribution, and a frame to thrive. But in return, they usually assume complete control of themselves and their image rights. It’s crazy how those leagues appear undisputed, whereas they finally only take benefit from their seniority. Someone with enough reputation, money, and passion could entirely create his league and make it attractive with a high salary. It would take time, for sure, but it would appear like a good opportunity a few years later. This league could be NFT-friendly, turning your license into a scarce asset on the blockchain with many utilities: you get injured? No problem, you lease it to a determined player for a pre-defined time. Thus, you create a passive revenue from an asset that is usually completely illiquid. You could even be able to cover your medical expenses with this operation. Imagine a soccer star like Benzema playing in this league. People would go crazy to buy this NFT, and its royalties would create high value for the league creator.

We could be more pragmatic and only think of raising funds to create the first community-owned league and share TV rights and other revenues between all NFT owners.

Most of the professional leagues are under monopoly with entities that look immutable whereas they are just old: WEB3 could make this industry healthier.

There are so many ways to disrupt this industry with elegant designs powered by blockchain; it's up to us to make it happen. So, as we show, athletes themselves should use blockchain to balance those central entities’ influence. NFTs could profoundly modify relations between athletes and fans, making them more involved in their success.

When does a smart contract be created to achieve this true shift paradigm?

The sports industry has similarities to the music industry: it’s ruled by a few prominent actors that centralize most of the power, influence, and revenue. However, we are talking about independent music artists making big money from NFTs. So, could we imagine NFTs disrupting this old sports industry too?

Professional leagues and sports teams are already leveraging their influence through NFTs and fan tokens - NBA top shot and Chiliz, for example. And professional players are also already using their image to earn extra revenue thanks to NFTs - Sorare, Ethernity, and the likes.

Those projects are branded as a way to strengthen links between athletes and fans. People are incentivized to buy those items to own a share of the influence and get involved in their favorite team's decisions. In practice, it’s more of a speculative investment: people buy those tokens on centralized exchanges where they can’t even use the governance power of their purchase.

As of now, blockchain-based items don’t enhance the fan experience.

We could even affirm that what was supposed to bring fans and athletes closer is making them farther than ever by reinforcing the position of central entities - federations, leagues, and clubs.

What a paradox, right?

To be a professional athlete doesn’t mean to play in a professional league anymore.

Thanks to social media, many athletes who didn’t make it the “old” way still make money, sometimes more than any professional league player. Through these new communication channels, they can efficiently leverage their image, get sponsors and earn a decent paycheck.

One could say that this new way of success promotes mediocrity by allowing anyone with good branding to shine through the prism of a sport without having the skills required. But, it would be underestimating the proportion of highly skilled athletes that didn’t achieve their dreams.

Since science highlights that success is a perfect blend between luck and hard work (Veritasium released a brilliant video about this), being a revenue-based-on-social-media athlete could appear as a second opportunity to shine and live from their passion. A way to surpass their lack of luck, maybe.

To go even further, this paradigm shift is also an excellent way to reshuffle the cards between different kinds of athletes. Indeed, the sports industry is a sector where social reproduction, in the sense of Bourdieu, is low - but does exist.

Athletes’ sons have a closer link with sports facilities and know the inner working - the best academy and agents - of this sector, so it’s “easier” for them to succeed. As I said, this advantage is pretty low in sports (7% in the French football league), but this new way to earn money thanks to your sports excellence and your branding on social media should be seen as an opportunity to offer a way out to athletes that don’t come from a family who know the code.

There are no more excuses acceptable for saying that classical professional leagues are the private turf of privileged athletes’ sons; you can bypass those codes with your iPhone.

Thus, WEB2 helped a wider selection of athletes to achieve their dreams - and in some way, made sports fairer.

But it’s still incomplete - in my opinion.

WEB2 allows them to extract value from their image, not directly from their sport and performance.

They need to create value from derivatives - merchandise, sponsors - that divert them from the objective to perform.

WEB3 could be the optimal solution to align interests between athletes and fans.

Imagine a world where independent athletes extract financial value directly from their community to compete in those leagues - no more need to extract value from derived product placements that cost them time and energy. An NFT sale suits well here - it’s the easier way to widely and openly raise funds. As a fan, you would be helping them to perform in better conditions and get a cut on their revenue if they succeed. You would be directly involved in their journey. In a nutshell, fans' and athletes’ interests would be fully aligned.

We don’t think it will create filthy rich athletes, far from it.

It would provide financial stability, freedom, and community all in one go, so what this does is create a sports industry middle class.

And actually, it would be a massive breakthrough in one of the more unequal industries: indeed, the gap between 0.001% of super-rich athletes and all the others is wider than in every other industry. Maybe we soon will witness the rise of those independent and crowd-funded athletes and see them compete - and defeat, who knows? - against traditional athletes in those classical professional leagues.

By the way, those professional leagues and teams have long been influential in the sports industry because they provide athletes with high salaries, high-level training, mass distribution, and a frame to thrive. But in return, they usually assume complete control of themselves and their image rights. It’s crazy how those leagues appear undisputed, whereas they finally only take benefit from their seniority. Someone with enough reputation, money, and passion could entirely create his league and make it attractive with a high salary. It would take time, for sure, but it would appear like a good opportunity a few years later. This league could be NFT-friendly, turning your license into a scarce asset on the blockchain with many utilities: you get injured? No problem, you lease it to a determined player for a pre-defined time. Thus, you create a passive revenue from an asset that is usually completely illiquid. You could even be able to cover your medical expenses with this operation. Imagine a soccer star like Benzema playing in this league. People would go crazy to buy this NFT, and its royalties would create high value for the league creator.

We could be more pragmatic and only think of raising funds to create the first community-owned league and share TV rights and other revenues between all NFT owners.

Most of the professional leagues are under monopoly with entities that look immutable whereas they are just old: WEB3 could make this industry healthier.

There are so many ways to disrupt this industry with elegant designs powered by blockchain; it's up to us to make it happen. So, as we show, athletes themselves should use blockchain to balance those central entities’ influence. NFTs could profoundly modify relations between athletes and fans, making them more involved in their success.

When does a smart contract be created to achieve this true shift paradigm?