Legal and Regulatory Considerations When Dealing with NFTs in Sports

Overview

NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) are an emerging class of digital assets. They have piqued the interest of both consumers and investors. Athletes, celebrities, and artists have started exploring NFT technology to monetize their brand, image, or work. Even though this asset class is in its infancy, legal and regulatory challenges that transpire around it are genuine. This article outlines critical legal considerations and implications related to NFTs in sports for athletes as they plan and implement their NFT plan.

Determining Whether an NFT is a Security or Not?

The reason for which an NFT comes into existence and then sold is one of the most crucial considerations in determining whether it is a security or not. For instance, an NFT is a representation of a tangible or intangible asset like a photograph or piece of digital art. If its owner auctions it in the form of a collectible with the authenticity powered by blockchain for public assurance, it is unlikely to be categorized as a security. However, if an NFT development and offering occurs as a mechanism for the general public to make investment returns, it is more likely to be classified as a security.

NFT makers aren’t the only ones who have to worry about whether or not an NFT is considered a security. Operators of NFT exchanges must also evaluate this problem carefully. If an NFT exchange platform makes a market for an NFT that is a security without adhering to regulations, it might face SEC penalties for running an unregistered securities exchange.

NFT and Rules and Regulations

Star athletes like Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, Rob Gronkowski, and soccer legend Pelé are jumping on the NFT bandwagon by forming their firms and producing their own NFT collections. Indeed, the NFTs market must be considered big business when millions of dollars are involved. So what do laws, rules, and regulations have to say about NFTs and sports?

Copyright Law

Copyright law in the United States necessitates assigning a certificate of copyright and ownership for original work to content owners. It gives owners the ability to restrict who copies, sells, licenses, or transfers their original content and who can create derivative works from the original work. Let’s understand how copyright law applies to NFTs.

The assumption is that, for instance, when you buy an NBA Top Shot Moment or one of the recently released Pelé NFTs, you are just purchasing ownership in the NFT and not its copyright.

A buyer does not have copyright ownership unless there is a formal contract with precise conditions specifying that the seller has assigned the copyright to the buyer. What exactly does this imply? It implies that a customer can’t lawfully produce copies of NFTs or sell, license, or transfer the NFTs’ copyright. On the other hand, a buyer must seek evidence that a seller owns an asset and has the right to create NFTs of the content. In summary, purchasers need to understand the conditions of sale detailed by an NFT marketplace. They must know what they’re purchasing and what kind of rights that they have gained.

NFTs and Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) Rights

In the sports industry, NIL rights have become the talk of the town. And there are some relations between them and NFTs. When you combine NFTs with NIL, you have another opportunity for up-and-coming athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness via auctionable digital collectibles and NFT contracts.

Indeed, the efforts to permit NCAA players to profit off their name, image, and likeness are growing. Currently, collegiate athletes are not allowed to receive any pay.

However, things may change soon as states have started enacting their NIL legislations, along with proposal submission at federal levels. Sooner or later, college athletes can collect remuneration for their name, image, and likeness through blockchain and NFT-enabled marketing partnership, collaboration, and endorsement contracts.

Conclusion

NFT is still an emerging concept. Thus, sports clubs, leagues, athletes, or investors dealing with NFTs must consult a securities lawyer. They must validate that there are no possible difficulties with an NFT’s strategy irrespective of whether it is considered a security and subject to securities regulation or not. It is also crucial to grasp the legal aspects that limit and enable them.

As NFTs grow in popularity, sports leagues and individuals will have more options to sell themselves, and thus, they must be prepared to deal with legal implications.
Blocsport.one is a sports powerhouse that develops solutions aimed toward reducing friction in outdated sports processes while ensuring efficiency and cost-effectiveness. It does so while being compliant with all the present rules and regulations.

NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) Taking Crypto Space by Storm

 

NFT (Non-fungible tokens) are taking the cryptocurrency world by storm. They facilitate content creators/owners to monetize scarce images, sports collectibles, contracts, tweets, videos, and whatnot for millions of dollars. Recently, for instance, digital artist Beeple auctioned an artwork for approximately $70 million. In another example, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, put his first-ever tweet for auction as an NFT token. The top bidder bought it for nearly $2.5 million. So, what are non-fungible tokens and why are people investing millions of dollars in this emerging crypto phenomenon? Let’s find out.

What are Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)?

NFTs are cryptographic tokenized representations of unique tangible and intangible assets powered by blockchain and smart contract technology. The underlying blockchain technology renders them secure, authentic, and traceable. Content owners invest in NFTs to monetize almost anything unique ranging from collectible virtual sports cards, real-estate assets, and digital sneakers to cars, drawings, music, or image rights.

What can become an NFT token/collectible 

Fundamentally, the use case range for NFTs expands beyond conceivable. Anything unique with provable ownership can be an NFT token or crypto collectible. The following are a few examples of NFTs.

  • An artwork
  • A limited-edition of sneakers
  • A rare in-game item
  • A piece of content
  • A sports collectible
  • An event ticket

The Importance of Scarcity in NFTs

A creator of an NFT gets to decide the supply (or scarcity) of a tokenized asset. For instance, a creator can choose how many NFT replicas of an asset can exist. These can be exact replicas, such as 1000 copies of an image. Also, the creator can create only one NFT as a rare collectible. The scarcity of NFTs is a crucial aspect that facilitates massive investment potential in them.

Investing in NFTs

Essentially, the investment opportunities provided by NFTs stem from their uniqueness and irreplaceability. One NFT cannot be interchangeable for another NFT or digital asset, thus, making it a one-of-kind. Due to this scarcity and their resale value, they have become quite popular among crypto and NFT collectors and investors. Investors pay enormous amounts of funds to get their hands on these NFTs. It is similar to purchasing traditional pieces of fine art. However, instead of holding on to them, selling these assets to the highest bidder generates significant gains on investments.

How to Enter the NFT marketplace?

Businesses and individuals, including sportspersons and sports clubs, can create, buy, and sell NFT tokens or crypto-collectibles on online marketplaces for NFT investments, like blocsport.one and nftdeals.io. Users only need to visit these websites and then follow the instructions to enter the NFT market.

The Process 

Users need to visit these dedicated platforms and upload their files. Then, the platform transforms them into NFT tokens. Here, NFT owners can also include specifications like a description of the work or image rights and expected pricing. They can attach metadata or attributes related to an NFT asset. For instance, an artist can sign its digital artwork with a signature in the metadata. Once the NFT is live on the platform, it is ready for buyers to invest.

The Future of NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens)

As reported by Al Jazeera, in 2020, NFT sales crossed the mark of $250m while the all-time investment reached about $534m. In 2021, these numbers can go even much higher, given the recent buzz and increasing interest of renowned celebs, sportspersons, companies, and more in NFTs. The NFT market is volatile and nascent. However, the significant potential they offer makes them a viable, long-term investment option.

More about NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) below:

Medium blog: here

Instagram: here

Twitter: here

Discord channel: here

Facebook link: here

Linkedin: here

Main blocsport.one site: here

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Rising Sports NCAA Stars Accelerator built on NFT & DeFi

NFT NCAA Accelerator is a game-changing innovation

NFT is the perfect tool to close the market gap between the fans and the young promising athletes, helping the athletes to raise the money and get the exposure required to progress in their career and become new sports icons. The fans and investors can have verifiable ownership of athlete’s assets in the form of NFTs.

Surprisingly, with the NFTs and DeFi platforms flourish, there was no exclusive sports NFT marketplace or DeFi platform that aims to help to close the market gap between the young promising talents and the fans. Now there is one.

Blocsport.one mission and focus

Swiss sports tech company blocsport.one is building a transparent and reliable sports ecosystem uniting athletes, clubs, brands and fans using blockchain. The company was created in 2019, headquartered in Zurich and to this day went through 2 successful investment rounds.

At first, we built a blockchain-based app for football player registration and transfers, beta is live and the first smart contract transfers executed.

As our second focus project now, we have already launched NFTdeals.io with the Rising Sports Stars official NFT collection, which is the first step to an exclusive NFT NCAA Sports Accelerator.

We help the young promising athletes to get the money and exposure for their career development, which is nobody else doing in the world!

Why buying NFTs of young athletes?

There are tons of NFTs nowadays available in many cluttered marketplaces, mostly having no value whatsoever. But the NFTs representing real assets of athletes that have high chances to become the next famous global stars are a different story.

We are building the marketplace with our NFTs 2.0 to get collectibles of emerging high potential star athletes of the future when they are just promising rookies. A successful sports and media career might provide significant upside potential and generate great value.

The Rising Sports Stars Accelerator

Blocsport.one is developing a platform to select, crowdfund and nurture the young athletes, to grow the emerging sports stars at scale. We are aiming to make a significant impact on the way the sports market works now.

Blockchain-based solutions enable crowdfunding at scale and sharing career success and profits with a community in a transparent and secure way.

Our focus is the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) space with over 500.000 athletes registered but the solution can be easily embraced worldwide. The new NCAA guidelines permit collegiate athletes (NCAA athletes) to sign and monetize their business contracts, assets, and NIL rights. This is a huge opportunity for the athletes and the sports business. But there is no platform or marketplace uniting the athletes and sports investors yet.

NFTs 2.0 in the making

There are many options that brands, fans and collectors can interact with the athletes and Rising Sports Stars NFT NCAA Accelerator pushes today’s NFT offering to another level.

The typical process starts from athlete authentication through our Blockchain of People (TM) solution. We want to be sure that registered people are real and IPs are real.

Then athletes are ready to create their GENESIS tokens that reflect the name, image and likeness as well as access NFTs that enable fans to interact with the athlete depends on engagement levels with access to content, VIP voting, meet & greet, collectibles and much more.

GENESIS tokens are super important because they form the Athlete Power Index, one of its kind tool to measure athlete potential and future upside. It allows athletes to build communities around them.

At the same time, fans can interact with blocsport.one native token ($BLS ticker, buy here) and earn with the athlete’s NFT enabling staking, affiliate program to earn BNB, access to exclusive NFTs and games of skill. The first games linked to the NFTs will be launched in August.

Beyond NFTs — institutional sports

Blocsport.one already have the football (soccer) Scouting App beta live, with biometric-powered athletes IDs stored securely on the enterprise-grade blockchain, with the athlete’s profiles, performance records and professional videos available on the transparent and secure platform.

Clubs, academies and federations can easily access and verify players information before making a hiring decision, communicate and process club-to-club transfer in a highly secure and efficient paperless way. The first players have been transferred with smart contracts already to European clubs.

Tokenization tools for intangible and tangible assets like marketing right contracts, player contracts, clubs tokenization & financial liquidity with the use of tokens are being discussed with clubs and associations in Europe.

Blocsport.one has all that it takes to grab the huge opportunity opened by the NCAA and make it a new profitable and sustainable business model for the win-win collaboration of all the sports market participants, in the fairest and transparent way, on the blockchain.

Homepage

https://nftdeals.io

Your Guide to Invest in Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Marketplace

The internet is one of many examples of exponential growth of tech innovation despite being complex initially. A glance at its past reminds us how smoothly technology can transform from science fiction to a mainstream concept. We, at blocsport.one, have that similar belief in non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

NFT is emerging technology development in the crypto space. It refers to digital files/token representation of unique tangible and intangible assets like arts, sports collectables, videos, audios, and others powered by blockchain technology. Recently, people have started investing millions of dollars in NFTs and continue doing so. A recent example of that is Jack Dorsey’s tweet selling in millions.

So, what is the reason behind all this hype? And why and how should you invest in the burgeoning market of NFT? Let’s explore.

Understanding NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens ) 

Essentially, an NFT is a digital token representation of a unique tangible or intangible but scarce asset. It can be in the form of tokens, collectibles, or contracts. Further, blockchain and smart contract technology ensure the ownership, traceability, and security of that NFT token/collectible. Advanced security and authentication mechanisms of these technologies provide immutable proof and validation of that NFT asset. Therefore, an NFT does not become vulnerable to fraud, duplication, or theft.

Why Invest in NFTs/Crypto Collectibles

Each asset representation as NFT that comes into existence is unique, scarce, and original. Thus, owners can think of them as specific digital assets that nobody else owns, but they only do. For instance, people might still have an image or a piece of art. But, they will have no possession over the original form of that asset. Here, NFTs emerge as an investment opportunity, considering the resale value of that asset.

It is similar to purchasing a physical piece of fine art. However, having possession over it only does not promise any returns. Instead, generating significant returns requires auctioning that piece of art to the highest bidder. For instance, purchasing a unique NFT and then selling it for more in the aftermarket can provide huge returns.

This idea of selling scare assets as tokens with blockchain-powered features makes them more enticing for investors.

Where and How to Buy NFTs

You would have heard about celebs and sports personalities selling NFTs. And, now you also want to invest in them and grow your collection. There are marketplaces available that let users shop or bid on NFT deals, like blocsport.one and nftdeals.io. They let them browse deals on assets like digital art, cars, contracts, and other collectibles, including clubs and players, and bid, buy or contract them.

How to Create and Sell NFTs

Users can also start investing and selling their unique collection of assets like digital art, sports collectibles, and more as an NFT token or a contract on these NFT Portals. They can also enable royalties with their NFTs. Royalty payment for reselling them on the secondary market depends upon their current sale price.

blocsport.one for Sports Clubs, Players, and NFT collectors

blocsport.one is a leading name in blockchain and biometrics implementations. It offers NFT solutions to clubs, players, and sports fans, like the NFT collectables portal, player scouting portal, crypto wallet, and more. Using the platform,

  • Clubs can invest in emerging talented players with smart transfers and scouting apps
  • Players can utilize blockchain technology and biometrics to list their sports profiles as amateurs or professional players
  • Collectors can browse and invest in a range of sports collectables, contracts, and more

Conclusion

We must separate the artistic movement from NFTs and consider it a growing technology and a reliable investment alternative. NFTs are not new technologies. They have primarily come into existence to make unique cryptographic representations of assets. They are here to stay and augment the financial services sector as we know it.

 

More about how to buy and invest in NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) below:

Medium blog: here

Instagram: here

Twitter: here

Discord channel: here

Facebook link: here

Linkedin: here

Main blocsport.one site: here

Invest in NFT with us!

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NFT (Non-fungible tokens)