Last week, OneFootball took its AERA NFT marketplace offline, which will close at the end of the month. In May, the company had 170 million users across its platform, but only a small proportion adopted NFTs. He released Serie A football NFT video moments to much fanfare a year ago. That was after raising $300 million in funding in April 2022, ostensibly to expand its web3 ambitions. Announced a joint venture with Dapper Labs and Animoca Brands.

However, this news is perhaps more about OneFootball than it is about web3, NFTs and sports. A simple investigation shows that some web3 sports platforms are still very active, even if the prices are lower than last year. In some cases not as low as might be expected.

Problems in OneFootball

OneFootball shut down its AERA web3 platform a week after OneFootball’s founder stepped down as CEO. According to the German newspaper Handelsblatt, he was pressured to step aside because the company is allegedly behind in paying sports rights to soccer leagues, including money for video broadcasting rights. The German Football League is reportedly owed 60 million euros ($66 million).

At the end of last year, the company laid off 62 employees and in February it laid off another 150 people. Apart from various web3 sponsors, its investors include various clubs such as Manchester City, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, ​​Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Juventus and others.

OneFootball AREA NFT

Some of the NFT collectibles holders are somewhat upset. NFTs will continue to exist, but the AERA community, competitions, and marketplace will cease. There were plans for more functionality and additional leagues. Last year, the German Bundesliga said it had sold the rights to NFT video moments to OneFootball, but we’re not aware of their release.

On social media, a handful of AERA fans reacted negatively accusing One Football of a scam. But since there are 50,000 fans who own all 250,000 collectibles, the response was relatively lukewarm. They bought packs that cost between $9 and $199 depending on the rarity, each containing three or four NFTs. Relatively few NFTs are for sale on the market: there are less than 300 listings.

In a statement, the company said: “Like many others in the Web3 space, (we) have faced some significant challenges.” He continued: “We have not found a route, one that is commercially viable for OneFootball and our partners, as well as one that offers the breadth and depth of the offer for all of you.” The platform is operated by Dapper Labs, the company behind NBA Top Shots.

The state of sports NFTs

Last year we wrote about how sports NFTs dominated the top ten charts when it came to NFT volumes traded rather than price. In fact, that hasn’t changed significantly even if prices are lower. When it comes to NFT transaction volume, two of the top three NFT collections of any genre are for sports NFTs. Instead, last September he was two of the top four.

However, the biggest hits are fantasy sports games (Sorare and Draft Kings). In other words, functional NFTs are more successful than pure collectibles. June is not a good time for favorable comparisons as several sports are not in season, so one would expect to see lower activity compared to September 2022 last year.

In related news, Candy Digital recently merged with Palm Studios.