ESPN is making its foray into the world of NFTs with ESPN NFTS: the sports giant on Wednesday announced a multi-year deal with Tom Brady’s NFT platform Autograph. The deal starts with an ESPN NFT drop based on the 10-part ESPN+ docu-series “Man in the Arena: Tom Brady” produced by media company Religion of Sports, co-founded by Brady.
Kevin Lopes, Vice President of Sports Business Development & Innovation at ESPN said about the deal:
“ESPN is excited to offer our first ESPN NFTs to meet our fans at the intersection of sports, technology and content. Our work with ESPN Edge has led us to where we are today, exploring new, innovative ways of engaging fans, and we are thrilled to partner with Autograph for this collection and others in the future.”
NFTs are blockchain-based tokens that give holders rights to mostly digital representations of art, music, and other collectibles. NFT trading volume soared in 2021 to $17.6 billion from $82 million in 2020, according to a report from Nonfungible.com.
ESPN NFTs collection is a collaboration with Autograph that’s centered on “Man in the Arena: Tom Brady,” a 10-part ESPN+ documentary series that premiered in November. Brady, who’s won seven Super Bowl championships, will sign 50 ESPN NFTs for the first collection, which goes on sale Wednesday on DraftKings Marketplace.
The “Man in the Arena” collection, jointly curated with Religion of Sports and LA-based Autograph, was made available for viewing on Autograph.io on Wednesday. Fans can buy ESPN NFTs from the collection on DraftKings Marketplace. The release was announced the same day it was revealed that the docu-series would be temporarily available on Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu.
“This unique collection around Tom’s ‘Man in the Arena’ docuseries marks the beginning of our relationship with ESPN,” said Dillon Rosenblatt, Co-Founder and CEO at Autograph. “As the first NFT partner for ESPN, the possibilities across sports and technology are endless, and we couldn’t be more excited to get this content out to the world in a massive way.”
The “Man in the Arena: collection features three ESPN magazine covers highlighting the celebrated NFL quarterback’s career, and accomplishments. There are 250 editions of the zine cover style ESPN NFTs going for $100 and 100 editions going for $250. Fifty ESPN NFTs signed by the athlete himself are also available for $500 each. A second ESPN NFT drop has also been announced and will coincide with the docu-series’ tenth episode debut on ESPN+.
Autograph recently completed a successful Series B funding round worth $170 million. It has previously done NFT drops for athletes like Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Simone Biles, Tony Hawk, Naomi Osaka and Brady himself. Other collaborations have been with music artist The Weeknd and the SAW movie franchise.
