🔊 Messi's $21 Million Web3 Bet

GM and happy Sunday.

Welcome to The Hype Report where we break down the latest news, stories & happenings around sports & web3 in less than 5 minutes.

Here's What You Need To Know This Week 📝

• Lionel Messi Backs Web3 Startup Matchday in $21M Seed Round

• Blockasset Expands To Chiliz Sports Platform

• Meta Drops Prices On VR/AR Headset

• Quick Hype & What To Watch/Read

Lionel Messi Backs Web3 Startup Matchday in $21M Seed Round ⚽

Matchday, a soccer-centric Web3 gaming startup, recently announced that it has raised $21 million in seed funding to develop a variety of games.

Among the investors is legendary soccer player Lionel Messi’s venture capital firm, Play Time.

Other firms that backed the startup include:

• Courtside Ventures

• Greylock

• HackVC

• Horizons Ventures

• Capricorn Investment Group

Spanish soccer star Alexia Putellas also serves as Matchday’s founding global ambassador.

Messi, who plays for pro team Paris Saint-Germain F.C. and recently led Argentina’s national team to the 2022 FIFA World Cup win, has already made a number of moves in the NFT world.

He’s a brand ambassador for the prominent NFT fantasy soccer game Sorare, as well as fan token platform Socios; Messi invested in the former and signed a $20 million endorsement deal with the latter.

He has also released his own official NFT collectibles through the Ethernity Chain platform.

Matchday already has an official license from FIFA and the FIFPRO players association.

Chief Gaming Officer, Sebastien de Halleux, previously served as an executive at the major game publisher Electronic Arts (EA), where he worked on the company's own FIFA game series and the Madden NFT franchise.

The company previously released a limited-time mini-game during the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and gave out 2 million NFT player cards to roughly 600,000 users.

Blockasset Expands To Chiliz Sports Platform 🪙

This week, athlete NFT platform Blockasset announced that it's expanding beyond its original home of Solana for Chiliz Chain 2.0, the new Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible Layer-1 blockchain from sports fan token firm Chiliz.

Here's a quick breakdown of how they stack up against one another:

With the expansion, Blockasset is also receiving an equity investment from Chiliz which owns the Socios fan token and rewards platform.

As reported last week, Chiliz recently launched Chiliz Labs, the $50 million incubator with VC firm Jump Crypto to support blockchain projects in sports.

Socios.com, the company that runs Chiliz, works with more than 170 partners including teams across the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLS, plus top soccer leagues around the world.

They also have deals with the UFC and Professional Fighters League and own an equity stake in FC Barcelona’s digital studio.

More than 40 athletes offer NFTs through Blockasset including:

• Former English Soccer Star Wayne Rooney

• NHL Veteran Alex Ovechkin

• The Late Great New Zealand Rugby Player Jonah Lomu

• UFC Fighter Jorge Masvidal

Blockasset joins live streaming provider FanFest and media gamification platform LiveLike in moving onto Chiliz’s blockchain.

In a blog post from Chiliz and Blockasset, the companies wrote that Blockasset will "now move the next development phase" from Solana to Chiliz Chain 2.0.

Chiliz CEO Alexandre Dreyfus said:

“Blockasset’s athlete-verified token approach is different yet completely complementary to our Socios.com team Fan Token model, allowing us to strengthen the utility of our Fan Tokens and increase our catalog of rewards through cross-activations."

Fans can buy Blockasset’s NFTs to access perks such as Discord chats with athletes, meet-and-greet events, merchandise, and signed memorabilia.

Chiliz offers similar rewards through Socios, its fan token platform that lets users vote in polls related to their favorite teams.

Chiliz plans to further invest in Web3 projects to help onboard them onto its blockchain network, with an emphasis on NFT ticketing and play-to-earn games.

Meta Slashes Prices On VR Headset 🕹️

Meta is dropping the prices for their VR headsets that power sports games like NFL Pro Era and Golf+.

The news comes following a 17% drop in fourth-quarter revenue at Reality Labs, the business and research unit that houses Meta's VR and metaverse efforts.

The Meta Quest Pro, the VR/AR headset designed for professionals, is going from $1,499 to $999 while the Meta Quest Pro 2 will see its 256 GB model go from $499 to $429.

The Quest Pro is Meta’s top-of-the-line headset has 3D forward-facing cameras that people could then use to meet in virtual rooms in person.

The Quest Pro 2 is the more consumer-friendly headset aimed at gaming enthusiasts and is even used in esports events such as the VAIL Pro League for the first-person shooting game VAIL.

All of this comes after talks of the metaverse dying down and not reaching its global potential yet.

Meta is currently facing scrutiny from its investors after Reality Labs lost $13.7 billion in 2022.

Quick Hype 🎯

Call of Duty streamer Herschel “Dr Disrespect” Beahm is one of the most popular streamers on YouTube. Now, he’s gone all-in on NFT games, calling digital collectibles “exciting” and lashing out at people who weren’t on board.

Crypto Winter Freezes Sports Sponsorship Deals in 2023. The ‘crypto winter’ is happening amid a wider economic downturn with costs of living rising as inflation soars. Executives are scrutinizing advertising spend, making marketing dollars more difficult to secure.

The sports industry has also started to see the potential of NFTs in fan engagement and in monetization. NFT Labs is a startup that aims to simplify NFTs for the web2 world and bring this technology to non-crypto-native people.

Two years after NBA Top Shot took the sports world by storm, NFTs continues to be a topic of conversation—though the tone of that conversation has changed numerous times in the interim. Are NFTs the future of sports cards and ticketing?

The BIG3 announced it has been named the Best in Web3 by Sports Business Journal at the inaugural Sports Business Awards: Tech, for the league’s first-of-its-kind Forever Experience Action Tokens (FEATs), which leverage blockchain technology to offer ownership-like benefits in the BIG3’s teams.

What To Watch 📺

Baron Davis has been a major catalyst for the web3 movement.

In this brief interview, he discusses the launch of SLiC Images, a right management platform for photographers, his perspectives on celebrities in crypto, and his thoughts on the future of the web3 space.

Check it out below:

What To Read 📖

Thanks for tapping in.

Have a great rest of the weekend and talk again soon,

Malcolm

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not financial or business advice in any capacity. The information shared is my thoughts & opinions and does not represent the opinions of any other person, business, entity, or sponsor. The contents of this newsletter also should not be used in any public or private domain without the author's express permission. The contents of this newsletter should not be used for any commercial activity, for example, research report, consultancy activity, or paywalled article, without the author's express permission.