Following the meteoric success of NBA Top Shot, the crypto-startup which created the sports-themed digital collectibles was eager for a repeat.
Back in 2021, Dapper Labs inked a deal with both the NFL and OneTeam Partners, a marketing joint venture founded in part by the NFL Players Association, or NFLPA. The plan was simple: replicate NBA Top Shot’s success by creating and selling a non-fungible token, or NFT, a collection using video clips from an even more popular professional sports league, the NFL.
At its zenith, NBA Top Shot generated sales revenues of $224 million in February 2021 before plummeting exactly one year to $47.6 million, according to CryptoSlam! Then, by February of this year, with the entire digital assets market in the grips of a prolonged bear market, NBA Top Shot collected a mere $2.9 million in sales, also according to CryptoSlam!.
By the time the NFL deal came together and the football-themed digital collectibles known as NFL All Day became available to a limited group of individuals during a soft launch at the end of 2021, it was already apparent to…