Back in 2022, the Tennis Australia’s forward-thinking administration launched 6,776 pictures of tennis balls as digital NFTs. Each one bought for 0.067 within the ethereum cryptocurrency, about $278 AUD on the time. Those identical NFTs at the moment are reportedly buying and selling for as little as 0.003ETH or $15 AUD on OpenSea, the self-described “world’s first and largest digital market for crypto collectibles and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)”. Ouch.
To add a bit of element and context, the NFTs have been linked to 19cm by 19cm plots on the courts on the Australian Open in Melbourne. At the time, Tennis Australia reportedly promised to replace the metadata on the NFTs each time a successful shot throughout a match landed on a given the plot.
What’s extra, Tennis Australia pitched the entire thing as being akin to an airline frequent flyers program, providing floor passes for finals weeks for NFT homeowners, so-called behind the scenes entry together with tickets to matches the next yr if their NFT court docket plot was linked to a match level. Oh, and a Discord channel for NFT homeowners was arrange.
In 2023, Tennis Australia launched an extra 2,545 NFTs, once more digitally depicting Australian Open tennis balls and linked to court docket plots, regardless of controversy springing from the notion of risky cryptocurrency markets. When you add the 2 tranches of NFTs collectively, they bought for round $3 million AUD. Nice work if you will get it.
At the time, Ridley Plummer, senior supervisor of metaverse, NFTs, web3 and cryptocurrency at Tennis Australia, stated the group was commited to NFTs for the long run.
“We shouldn’t simply put down our instruments and stroll away as a result of the market’s having its challenges. There’s clearly a ton of exterior components that come into play once you’re exploring a brand new know-how like web3 and NFTs, and once you’re an progressive firm like Tennis Australia and the AO there’s clearly challenges and and rewards that include that as properly,” Plummer stated.
In 2024, it is thought Tennis Australia didn’t difficulty any additional NFTs, although current homeowners got floor passes. For this yr’s event, presently working in Melbourne, plainly the Australian Open is not mentioning the NFT scheme in any respect or providing floor passes. The Guardian says that the Discord server has been shut down, the related web sites are “dormant” and that Tennis Australia is not responding to “a number of requests for remark.”
Thus it does slightly appear that Tennis Australia and the Australian Open would slightly the entire thing simply disappeared. All we are able to say is that it does not appear shocking that one thing of little obvious worth has certainly turned out to have little precise worth, although within the curiosity of full transparency, this creator does not get NFTs. At all.
