Football World Cup to Add Up to $17 Billion to Qatari Economy

Source: Bloomberg 

Art by: @BETIRRI (Please check him out).

How can one sporting competition generate so much money? The answer lies in the simple economics rule of supply and demand. This rule is incredibly fascinating when it comes to market demand for the best players in the world. According to official audience data from FIFA, more than half of the entire world watched the world cup 2018. That's a mind-blowing record of 3.572 billion people. This year the world's population grew to 8 billion, so as you can imagine, there is even more demand for football. The competition for top talented players is unbelievable. Everyone knows that if they sign "the cream of the crop" players, they also increase their club's chances of winning the trophies. 

Top football clubs deploy their scouts to the World Cup for a reason. Most of the time, scouts know in advance which players they want to watch closely. Then, after analyzing the players' performance, they submit reports to club owners and make final transfer decisions. As a result, the value of these best-performing football players increases astronomically. But who else is the beneficiary of this massive price increase? 

Historically, clubs and players are the only ones who have benefited from player transfers; meanwhile, fans, the same people responsible for demand, are left on the sidelines. That was the case until the creation of sports NFTs.

In today's newsletter:

⁃ The most expensive sports NFTs ever sold

⁃ What are NFTs (Just In case)

⁃ What is Rookie Scout, and why I started it

⁃ What’s Trending

The most expensive NFTs ever sold

There is an old idiom "a fool and his money are soon parted." And there will be those who argue that people prepared to pay outrageous sums for NFT cards fall into this category.

The auction house Christie's set a world record in March of this year by selling a digital work by the artist known as Beeple for US $69 million. That's incredible, but we are here to talk sports and investments, and let's be frank, it's not everyone's destiny to become the next Picasso or Beeple. So, when Lionel Messi sold a limited edition of authenticated NFTs, they sold out on the first day of the issue for $3.4 million, a record for a sports star. 

Let's talk about other stunning NFT trading card sales that happened this year alone on a platform called - Sorare.

In February 2022 - The Erling Haaland NFT trading card sold for $600,000. Even though Norway didn't make it to the World Cup, Haaland, one of the most famous soccer players in the world, demonstrates his supreme abilities by being the face of the most expensive Sorare soccer trading card to date.

While Haaland's card is rare, the card for Kylian Mbappé, which went up for auction at the beginning of May, is a one-of-a-kind piece that sold for about $440,000. Sorare, the Ethereum-based platform, recently announced Kylian Mbappé as their investor and brand ambassador. Since adding the French star as ambassador, Sorare's secondary sales have increased by nearly 800%. Talk about the effect of social media. 

What about the GOATs? 🐐🐐

Messi just became an ambassador of Sorare also. It was a massive deal since Messi is in the top 5 of the most followed Instagram accounts. Even CNBC covers this news - CNBC. To date, the most expensive Messi's NFT card sale happened eight months ago. At that time, the platform sold his Unique edition card for about $250,000. 

Now let’s talk about Ronaldo. There is no new version of CR7 on Sorare because the platform is yet to license with Premier League. However, when Cristiano played at Juve, his Unique card sold for about $13,000. So someone certainly got a deal. Since then, even his lower-tier cards (Rare version) have sold for more than $20K. Also, just a week ago, the world's leading and most prominent cryptocurrency exchange platform Binance announced a partnership with Cristiano. The NFT collection coming soon. Finally, yesterday he said goodbye to RedDevils fans, so in one of the following letters, I'll cover his NFT sale and update you on his next career move. 

Are these people fools to pay this much for a digital player card? Let me give you my take on this.

We are finally doing this. 

What is Rookie Scout, and why I started it

Hi, I'm Oleg. After playing and trading some NFT cards, I needed useful information about real-world events and how they affect the prices of NFT cards. The card's price is usually affected by performance, transfer rumors, injuries, etc. I couldn't find one resource and decided that fans need a newsletter and, at some point, a platform that will cover all of the above. As you might have guessed based on the picture above, I'm passionate about soccer and investments. And so, Rookie Scout was born. The idea came to me a long time ago, but I would always come up with an excuse not to send the first letter. "Maybe it's trash… The grammar is off because I'm foreign… or I should wait for a bigger adoption of the Sorare platform..." to mention a few. But now, I’m putting the bull 💩aside and going for it. Let's dig in…

We all want to find young talent before they move to Real Madrid and become the next superstar. In the past, as a fan, if you predicted the next Maradona or Pele, you could not monetize your knowledge unless you bought a bunch of physical trading cards or flew to Argentina and had Messi sign all your paraphernalia. Even then, you would have to prove authenticity. Nowadays, everything is stored on the blockchain, and if you can spot that top talent early on before moving to a big grand, you are golden. You can make a fortune if you’re lucky enough to pick up their "Rookie" card. That's how I came up with the name "RookieScout," not to mention that NFTs are a relatively new thing to all of us, so we are all rookies here. 

Our newsletter will primarily be focused on real football or, as most of you might call it - Soccer. If you dig our work, we might create separate newsletters covering other sports in the future.

We will send regular updates about Sorare cards and other cool NFTs, along with juicy transfer rumors, updates, and the most up-to-date stats. In addition, we would like to create a community of fans that can now monetize their knowledge through NFTs.

So, WTF is an NFT

Let's roll back a little.

Since you are reading our first letter, I'm sure you likely know me personally, which means you are familiar with NFTs. Still, in case you have lived under a rock for the last few years - NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are a form of crypto asset which uses blockchain technology to record the ownership of digital assets like images, video, and text. Some NFTs are represented by art only, their uniqueness and scarcity being the art and the limited number sold. However, RookieScout will focus primarily on cards licensed with the league and the ones you can use to win more cards. In other words, we are talking about cards that have - Utility.

Instead of picking players from a list during the draft, people buy digital trading cards that are tokenized on Ethereum. For example, in traditional fantasy sports, your cards expire, and you must draft new cards every season. "Web3 changes that". Now, if you own a card of players on Sorare, you can play them as long as they are not retired from the sport in the real world. Of course, there might be a difference in the additional % you can score per game depending on the season but let's get to that in future newsletters. You need to understand one important thing. The price people are willing to pay for NFTs primarily reflects those players' market value in real life.

A word of caution for any holder of digital assets. 

Bitcoin, the poster child for crypto-currencies, has lost 75% of its value since November 2021. It is a helpful reminder that, in the world of digital assets, while making large sums of money quickly, it is just as possible to end up on the wrong end of a sizeable loss.

WHAT'S TRENDING

• Messi and Ronaldo did their first-ever joint promotion as the legendary duo played chess together in an advertisement for the one and only Louis Vuitton. - Twitter link / @LouisVuitton

Most disappointing for me is the knowledge that these two didn't even sit down for a game of Chess; it's two images stitched together. But interestingly, the setup of the board is a replica of a match between World Champion Magnus Carlsen and Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura back in 2017, which ended in a draw.

• Here are the highlights from US's first game of the World Cup - FOX SPORTS

• Houston artist's renowned work on sports figures to be on display at FIFA World Cup in Qatar -Preview.houstonchronicle

• Budweiser makes the best out of the last-moment alcohol ban:

• Insane Saudis Celebration - Instagram / oldrowsports

• After the game proposal has gone wrong. - Instagram / @433 Someone in the comments said, "after a few years, you'll understand that the man tried to save your life." lol.

• Japanese fans stayed after the match to clean up the stadium. Respect! Twitter / ESPN

• Ochoa memes - El Universal / YouTube

Thanks for reading!

I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know which players you are following this World Cup, and let's compare the price of their NFT before, during, and after the performance.

I can't wait to hear from you. Please send me any cool news you come across, too. I might feature it in the following newsletters!

And one last thing, Pleaseeeeee trash me as much as possible. Of course, I would appreciate compliments but constructive criticism, suggestions, and overall feedback are a few things I ask from my early subscribers. I will find a way to reward the most active ones of you. If you are in Houston, I might take you to the Dynamo game or something.

Cheers! 

Oleg

The RookieScout Team - monetize your sports knowledge.

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