In brief
- WAGMI United has formed an ownership group of NFT collectors, crypto enthusiasts, and sports execs to buy a soccer team.
- It plans on upending the English Football League by tapping into new funding sources.
Running a soccer club is easy—just look at “Ted Lasso,” in which an American football coach tries his hand at the world’s game, winning over the team with his pluck and can-do spirit.
In true American fashion, a group of investors that includes NFT evangelist Gary Vaynerchuk and Philadelphia 76ers President Daryl Morey, says it “is in advanced negotiations to purchase an English Football League club” using cryptocurrency.
The organization behind the purchase, WAGMI United—a play on the crypto rallying cry “We’re All Gonna Make It”—is claiming it’s the “first time the sale of a professional sports team has been partially financed through cryptocurrency.” However, partial stakes—if not wholesale transfers of control—in pro sports teams have been financed with crypto; a Club Necaxa owner this year sold a 1% stake in the Mexican soccer team via NFT.
WAGMI United says, once final, it will incorporate a “cutting-edge and crypto-centric approach to running the club.” Though the target acquisition remains undisclosed, co-founders Preston Johnson and Eben Smith (co-creator of the PUNKS Comic NFTs and co-founder of the Digital Collectibles Agency, respectively) are already referring to it as “Crypto’s Club.”
WAGMI United didn’t go into details about what a crypto-centric approach might look like, beyond team NFTs for supporters and more decentralized…
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