The three major sports giants "moved" to NFT, and the "culture war" in the Web3 era may come

Original author: Zhou Zhou, Tiger Sniff Financial Group

Seeing that Nike and Adidas are having a good time in the NFT world, Puma finally couldn't sit still.

Recently, Puma, the third largest sports brand in the world and a German listed company, changed its "name" on Twitter from the previous PUMA to "PUMA.eth". This "new name" itself is an NFT. Industry insiders believe that this is an upgrade of the Puma brand, which means that Puma will continue to explore the NFT world.

According to Tiger Sniff, all major sports brands around the world have embraced NFTs, such as Nike, Adidas, Under Armor, ASICS, New Balance...even domestic Anta, Li Ning, our common sports brands, all More or less started the NFT layout.

NFT (irreplaceable "currency") is a digital asset, often displayed in the form of pictures, audio or video, which is recorded on the digital ledger of the blockchain. In the virtual world built by humans in the future, every flower and grass is an NFT. At present, more and more designers are joining in to design various NFTs. The NFT trading platform realizes that each collector has his own unique "personal museum" by establishing a virtual museum. Excellent NFT design works, through the competition of the market economy, form IPs such as Mickey Mouse, Iron Man, and Doraemon under the blessing of network effects and money appreciation, and create a powerful IP economy.

The combination of international sports brands and NFT is a kind of IP economy created by it. Take Bingdundun NFT as an example. When Bingdundun becomes a well-known IP image, it can not only become the endorsement of a clothing brand, but also can be made into an animated film, and even build Disney, Universal Studios, etc. based on multiple IPs. The theme park brings huge benefits to the design team and even the entire related industry chain. Of course, just as NFT is a kind of IP economy that has been developed for hundreds of years abroad, IP is only one of the application forms of NFT.

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Puma: Nike and Adidas have been suffering for a long time

As the third largest sports brand in the world, Puma has always hoped to be as famous as Nike and Adidas, but unfortunately it is weaker than them in various statistics.

——In terms of revenue, according to the financial report for the third quarter of 2021 (the latest comparable data), Nike’s revenue is 12.2 billion U.S. dollars, Adidas’s revenue is 6.5 billion U.S. dollars, and Puma’s revenue is only 2.1 billion U.S. dollars.

——In terms of net profit, according to the financial report for the third quarter of 2021 (the latest comparable data), Nike's net profit is about 1.5 billion US dollars, Adidas is about 500 million US dollars, and Puma is about 200 million US dollars.

——In terms of market value, as of February 25, Nike was $219.5 billion, Adidas was $45 billion, and Puma was $13.6 billion.

It can be seen from the above that although Puma is called the third place in the international sports brand, there is still a big gap with the former two. Of course, compared to well-known international brands such as ASICS and Under Armor, Puma is even better.

However, Puma, as the "mainstay", found that it has been a bit "weak" in marketing recently. Whether it is Nike Adi, which is ahead of it in terms of performance and market value, or Under Armor and ASICS, which are not as good as it, they have already grabbed "a piece of the pie" in the NFT field, and it is still in place.

Especially the industry leader-Nike, which is "rich and powerful", has invested quite boldly in NFT.

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RTFKT's NFT sneakers

At present, the price of a pair of NFT sneakers of RTFKT is about 10 Ethereum (170,000 yuan), which is a hundred times that of high-end Nike shoes.

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Nike NFT full layout (Tiger Sniff drawing)

Nike is also the company with the most cutting-edge technological vision among the big sports brands. As early as 2019, Nike was exposed to have applied for a patent called "Cryptokicks". At that time, NFT was still a technical form that no one cared about. International big brands attach great importance to the authenticity and uniqueness of shoes, and the patent applied by Nike is used for traceability and anti-counterfeiting. When you buy a pair of Nike sneakers as a customer, you will also get a unique NFT generated by the sneakers. Because NFT is created on the digital ledger of the blockchain, it is unique, so that the authenticity of the sneakers can be guaranteed.

As a German sports brand, Puma's "old rival" Adidas is not far behind。

In mid-December last year, Adidas launched 30,000 "Into the metaverse" series of NFT works, each of which cost $800 (about 5,000 yuan) and was swept away by enthusiastic consumers in a short period of time. The first time you tried, you won grossed nearly $24 million. Adidas' net profit in the third quarter of last year was only US$500 million.

Adidas is also the sports brand that "loves to make friends" in the NFT field. It not only entered The Sandbox (a blockchain-based virtual game world), established a partnership with Coinbase (a cryptocurrency exchange), but also established three partners: Boring Ape Yachting NFT Club; Rogue Manga NFT; AR Company G-Money strikes partnership.

The boss, Nike, invested heavily, and the second child, Adi, has a wide range of friends. Even Arthur, who is "neither three nor four", occupies the name of the first company to release NFT sneakers. In mid-July 2021, ASICS will launch 9 NFT sneakers on OpenSea.

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ASICS NFT sneakers

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Renamed to "take root" in a gathering place for young people

In order to distinguish itself from other international sports brands, Puma first thought of making a fuss about its own brand Logo.

Whether it is Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, or Asics, their logos are all symbols. Although they are concise, they do not have any concrete meaning. Puma is different. Its logo itself is a cheetah, which represents faster speed.

Before changing its name, Puma had already begun to consciously collect some NFTs of cats such as cheetahs, and formed a "museum" for people to browse, which is impressive. These include: Gutter Cat #1110, Lazy Lions NFT, Cool Cats NFT, and Kuddle Koala NFT, among others.

At present, whether it is a foreign NFT platform or a domestic digital collection platform launched by Ant and Tencent, it is popular to integrate the NFT collected by each person or company into a "museum". A large number of Web3 users like to look at the works collected by others, and recognize the brand by recognizing the works collected by others.

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A digital collection platform in China

The NFT platform is becoming a new social place, which is why Nike, Adidas, and Puma are unwilling to let go of this new opportunity. As long as it is a place where young people gather, sports brands will not let it go.

By collecting NFTs of feline animals, Puma has attracted those NFT and Web3 enthusiasts on Twitter on the one hand. Puma currently has 1.8 million fans on Twitter, and this number is still growing; Animal-like NFTs are selectively collected to further deepen users' awareness of the brand.

Another breakthrough of PUMA in NFT gameplay is "renaming", changing the previous PUMA to "PUMA.eth".

It is a very common way to announce your attitude towards the encryption and Web3 world by changing your name and introduction on Twitter. Previously, Sequoia Capital changed its vision on Twitter from helping adventurous people create great companies to: "From idea to implementation, we help adventurous people build great DAOs .” However, among international sports brand companies, Puma purchased the NFT of the ETH domain name and changed its name for the first time.

Other companies with ETH domains include Budweiser, which acquired Beer.eth for 30 ETH. Notably, Puma ranks 13th on the .eth leaderboard, which lists the most followed .eth-named Twitter accounts by follower count.

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Number of Opensea users

According to DuneAnalytics data, as of February 24, 2022, the number of NFT users on Opnesea alone has exceeded 1.34 million. As can be seen from the above figure, this number of users is still growing rapidly. It is reported that the number of users of the NFT digital collection platform launched by Ant Group has also exceeded 5 million. According to Tiger Sniff, the number of users of the NFT platform launched by Tencent is also very impressive. According to the data released by its platform, each NFT series can attract more than 100,000 people to compete for.

A large number of emerging users pay the bill, which also makes sports brand giants continue to increase their bets in the NFT field.

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A long-premeditated "culture war"

An industry insider once told Tiger Sniff: At present, there are more than 100 NFT digital collection platforms in China, and the author alone has contacted more than 30 NFT platforms, and there are countless NFT series. And those who can finally stay may be less than 1%.

This is very similar to the “Thousand Groups War” in the Internet era in 2010. At that time, there were more than 5,000 companies engaged in group buying, but in 2014 there were only more than 100 companies left, and now only a few companies such as Meituan remain.

At present, some of the most famous NFTs, such as Cryptopunks, Boring Ape (BAYC), etc., each have their own cultural attributes. Cryptopunks refer to Ander Warhol's artistic thinking behind it, and also reflect various races around the world through different skin colors and avatars. The same is true for the team behind Boring Ape. Its creator is a Chinese girl, and the team behind it is also from different skin colors. Each ape represents a unique aesthetic.

Behind bringing identity symbols to users, the artist integrates and displays modern technology and the spiritual state of modern humans through the form of NFT. And this is one of the reasons why Adidas chose to cooperate with the Boring Ape Club, and Puma cooperated with CatBlox, which conveyed a resonant culture and values ​​to users.

At present, there is only Bingdundun NFT in China, which has formed a relatively large influence internationally. This is also the reason for the blessing of the Winter Olympics and the panda image. We still lack an NFT that is completely popular under market economic conditions.

NFT was born and emerged abroad as early as three years ago, and its real introduction into China actually began in the second half of 2021. Most NFT companies have only been established for half a year, and many foreign NFT projects such as RTFKT and Boring Ape were established a year or two ago, and are now valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. The NFT trading platform Opensea has even been valued at 1.5 billion dollars. These companies have a variety of businesses, allowing sports brands such as Nike and Adidas to have more ways to play.

At present, the NFT (digital collection) gameplay of domestic sports brand giants is limited to publishing digital collections in the form of relatively rough pictures. This is due to the fact that the development time of China's digital collections is still short and the mass base is not broad enough. With the joining of Internet giants and the rush of start-up companies, perhaps a year or two later, a number of NFT projects and platforms with a valuation of over 100 million will also appear in China.

Anta and Li Ning are not short of "money". They just lack an IP work that can reflect the value of the times and resonate with people generally, as well as a healthy blockchain ecosystem behind it.