In celebration of their Premier League title, football club Manchester City partnered with visual artist Jon Noorlander for their first NFT art collection. The 1 Collection is a series of four digital artworks and an open edition that’s now available on MakersPlace.
The Champions Medal is available for 2 hours as a $200 open edition. At the moment of writing 37 collectors have purchased one of these. In addition four unique artworks will be auctioned, and bids are already coming in. The Champions Celebrate is arguably the most interesting artwork, as its a signature Noorlander piece as hundreds of City logos modeled after a character, dance in the City dressing room.
The auction event also has a presence in Decentraland. The MakersPlace venue has rebranded into a Manchester City venue. This is the first ever NFT collection by Manchester City, however the football club also partnered with Animoca Brands in December 2020.
NFT and sports a strong combination
NFTs fit well into sports culture. For many decades fans have been collecting baseball cards or football stickers. In addition they’ve been playing Madden NFL or FIFA, buying the latest version year after year. Sports fans are passionate, and where there’s passion there’s money.
Among the top NFT projects in terms have active traders, we see lots of sports products. According to data from DappRadar, among the five NFT collections with the most users there are three sports-related projects. NBA Top Shot on the Flow blockchain had more than 211 thousand traders in the past 30 days. Fantasy football game Sorare had more than 11 thousand traders, followed by Major League Baseball on the Wax blockchain with 10,444 active wallets.
