NFT, Bored Ape

Why footballers are spending thousands on cartoon monkeys

Joey D'Urso and Adam Crafton
Jan 11, 2022

The Twitter feed of Chelsea defender Reece James is not particularly active, but when he does post to his 740,000 followers, it is pretty much what you would expect of a young footballer.

Among the on-pitch action shots and motivational messages, one recent tweet stood out.

James shared a picture of his new “Mutant Ape”, a non-fungible token (NFT) minted by the Mutant Ape Yacht Club, an off-shoot of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection. It made James a member of an exclusive club that includes Chelsea legend John Terry and other celebrities, such as Eminem and Jimmy Fallon.

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If no part of that sentence makes sense to you, that’s OK, we can take it slowly from here.

NFTs are digital assets that are bought and sold for large sums of money, just like a piece of art or a football sticker. Some have changed hands for millions of dollars.

Critics, however, feel they can entrap less wealthy punters into a frenzied world of speculation and financial risk. The NFT market is completely unregulated.

The Premier League is considering the option of launching an NFT collection next season and clubs including Manchester City and Rangers have already got in on the act.

Fantasy football game Sorare also used the technology for a fantasy football trading card game and Premier League stars, including Andrew Robertson and Luke Shaw, have lent their “brand” to NFT companies.

Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold changed his profile picture to an NFT image of Muhammad Ali a couple of months ago, then quietly changed it again, perhaps because of a vociferously negative response from some of his followers, a common theme of any footballer posting about NFTs.

“It could be crypto or it could be the vaccine or jewellery or watches or cars,” an agent told The Athletic. “If there is a trend, if one does it, they are all at it.”

One of the most high-profile NFT projects is Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), “a collection of 10,000 unique Bored Ape NFTs” traded on the OpenSea platform, a bit like an eBay for NFTs.

Each ape is different, with special features such as chains, glasses or caps. They are now traded on OpenSea for eyewatering sums of money. For example, rapper Eminem bought one on New Year’s Eve for almost half a million dollars.

As well as owning an NFT of a cartoon monkey, holders also get “members-only benefits”, including a “collaborative graffiti board” and the ability to purchase exclusive items such as BAYC clothing. A recent article in Input Magazine detailed a lavish party for BAYC owners in New York City, featuring A-list entertainment like comedian Chris Rock and music from The Strokes.

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“Buying a Bored Ape costs 0.08 ETH,” says the BAYC website, referring to the cryptocurrency Ethereum, which is used to make purchases. This is around £200 or $270, although the value of Ethereum, like other cryptocurrencies, fluctuates hugely day by day. “There are no price tiers,” says the website. “BAYC membership costs the same for everyone.”

This is not really the case anymore, though, because those entry-point “bargains” are no longer available.

The lowest “floor price” for BAYC NFTs at the moment on OpenSea — the lowest price at which NFTs can be bought — is 66ETH (£163,000, or $220,000).

The two Chelsea stars’ NFTs are part of the “Mutant Ape Yacht Club”, a BAYC spin-off that trades for slightly less than the originals.

Blockchain technology, which underpins cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, enables us to track the movements of the NFTs.

Terry’s OpenSea account reveals that he holds 47 different NFTs across two different accounts on the platform, including “Honorary Ape Kids Club” artwork of himself, wife Toni and two children as cartoon monkeys. Many of these have been bought for thousands of pounds.

By far the most valuable NFT in his collection is a Mutant Ape.

Because all transactions are recorded, we can see how much Terry paid for the NFT on Christmas Eve: 9.55 ETH (ÂŁ23,400 or $31,700).

Since then, people have bid higher amounts for the NFT — some upwards of $41,000 (£30,200) — which means Terry could have netted a considerable profit in just a couple of weeks.

On January 8, the former Chelsea captain listed a “John Terry Ape” for a week-long auction that soon attracted bids over $7,000 (£5,200). The Athletic asked Terry’s representative about the auction and the following day Terry declared the profits will go to Make A Wish, which supports seriously ill children. The former defender has been an ambassador for the charity and raised money for it before.

It is not clear whether the pledge to donate his profits refers to this single NFT or will apply to the money Terry has made on the dozens of others in his collection that are also being traded for huge sums.

The day after his charity announcement, Terry used his Twitter account to promote “Ape Kids Club” — a colourful website containing childlike stories of “a magical world where apes ruled the metaverse” — in a birthday message to Chelsea’s Mason Mount. There is no suggestion Mount himself is involved.

The NFTs’ initial sale sold out and these cartoon baby monkeys are now trading for hundreds of dollars on OpenSea.

James has simply “transferred” his Ape into an OpenSea wallet that has no other NFTs. We cannot be sure whether he paid for it by other means or was simply given it, perhaps on the condition he would tweet about it, thereby advertising the project.

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The person who gifted him the NFT was LA-based businessman Ismail Oyekan, who sells 30-minute “marketing consultation sessions” for $700 (£515) via his @ishmilly Twitter page, alongside advertising his ownership of two Bored Apes.

The seemingly endless inflation of the value of cartoon monkeys, which were initially sold for £200, is why they are so appealing to people with vast amounts of wealth — and why others think they are so dangerous when promoted to fans with far less money than the superstars promoting them.

These players could make huge amounts by “flipping” their NFTs for more money in a short space of time or prices could suddenly collapse. Nobody can predict how the market will move next.

The best way of explaining this bizarre new phenomenon is by starting with some more tangible analogies.

Football has long attracted big-money markets in physical artefacts, such as match-day memorabilia or physical trading cards, like a Topps card of Norway and Dortmund star Erling Haaland that sold for $442,800 at auction earlier this year.

The Haaland card is one-of-a-kind, which makes it more valuable than a version with thousands of identical copies. Adam Lovatt, chief legal officer for fan engagement platform IQONIQ, says NFTs are a bit like the digital version of this.

The tokens are based on blockchain, which means all transactions are digitally recorded and can be made “provably scarce” (ie, the number created is limited). Just as Bitcoin has changed the world of finance, NFTs are attempting to do the same for digital artefacts, like a video of a goal or a photo of a stadium.

“The NFT gives you a unique code that lets you say, ‘I am the only person in the world that has a digital image of this stadium’,” said Lovatt in an interview with The Athletic earlier this year, likening NFTs to an old match-day programme that has a unique serial number on the back proving it is one of a kind.

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A big claim of NFT advocates is that the technology can revolutionise the world of art for the digital age.

A painting like the Mona Lisa is provably scarce: Leonardo Da Vinci only painted one copy and it is hanging in the Louvre gallery in Paris. For digital art issued as an image, though, anyone can simply download or screenshot it.

NFTs try to get around this problem by generating “provable scarcity” on the blockchain — essentially a code that demonstrates there is only one owner of a particular NFT.

For many people, though, this feels like the Emperor’s New Clothes. You can still screenshot a digital image, but you can’t screenshot the actual Mona Lisa.

Furthermore, the image itself is not stored on the blockchain. Instead, a code linking to the image is stored on the blockchain. An NFT owner does not own the image but rather a link to it.

Social media users have poked fun at the concept of NFTs by becoming self-styled “right-clickers”. They right-click and save an image and then compare it to the same NFT that has just changed hands for huge sums of money.

Whatever your view of NFTs, lots of wealthy people want to get in on the act. They want to be seen to be getting in on the act and also to potentially make some fast cash.

This can be particularly appealing for footballers who not only earn huge sums of money but also have limited chances to spend it on fancy holidays or parties given their hectic work schedule.

“Agencies are receiving a lot of emails from different crypto or NFT firms. In one case, a consultant linked to a Premier League club passed it on to players,” says one agent. “Back in the old days, players were enticed by film schemes and tax schemes, which smart agents swerved in favour of proper and safer investments.”

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But the people who get very rich off the back of these schemes are generally not the punters who get in when they see an athlete advertising something. Instead, it is those who are lucky enough to get into something very early.

Many cryptocurrencies have skyrocketed in value over the last year, with Dogecoin, a satirical token promoted by billionaire businessmen Elon Musk, making some people unexpectedly wealthy when it surged in the spring of 2021.

These stories make headlines globally but cryptocurrency attracts less attention when it slides in value.

Bitcoin, the original and best-known cryptocurrency, has risen hugely over the past decade but the difference in value between the start of 2021 — the year it truly hit the mainstream — and today is not nearly as dramatic. For every huge spike, there is a dramatic dip.

NBA Top Shot, an NFT-based basketball highlights collection, also attracted global headlines when values boomed last March, but things have gone quieter since as they have slumped.

“The original argument from clubs or players that this is an interesting piece of tech or a new way to own art has largely vanished as the true, speculative nature of NFTs has become apparent,” says Martin Calladine, co-author of Fit and Proper People, a new book about how football clubs are owned.

“In the old days, retired players used to open a pub or do after-dinner speaking. Now we see people like John Terry using his millionaire lifestyle to attract supporters into buying into NFTs with the unspoken promise that it will allow them to access the kind of lifestyle he has.”

Whatever the criticism of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, it is true that anybody can buy a small amount of it and get in on potential gains (or losses).

Bored Apes, though, are far too expensive for ordinary fans. This is now an exclusive club for already very rich people, way beyond the means of most football supporters.

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It is too early to tell whether the Bored Ape phenomenon will turn out to be a fantastic investment for these football stars or the peak of a speculative bubble that is about to go pop.

But if it is the latter, the multimillionaire footballers will probably still be fine. Less affluent fans who attempt to copy their heroes, however, may not be.

(Design: Tom Slator)

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