Antonio Brown meltdown video goes up for NFT auction
A Las Vegas entrepreneur has acquired the exclusive rights to the non-fungible token of former National Football League wide receiver Antonio Brown’s Jan. 2 on-field meltdown and will sell it as a piece of football memorabilia in an online auction.
Evan Savar acquired the rights to NFT the video footage, originally captured from a fan’s camera phone, and is auctioning it on ViralHeir.com, at a launch price of 1 Ethereum, went up for auction at noon on Thursday and running through 6 p.m. PST on Sunday. Ethereum, a form of cryptocurrency, was trading at roughly $3,343 per unit on Wednesday, according to Coinbase.com.
ViralHeir is a technology company that transforms video rights into collectible NFTs that can be owned, collected and traded on the blockchain.
The NFT is expected to sell for as much as $1.5 million based on comparable viral clip sales, according to a release about Savar’s plans to auction the footage.
“Antonio Brown actually made me lose my fantasy football league,” Savar said in the release. “I was trying to figure out why he wasn’t getting any points on the board for me when I saw the sideline meltdown clip on Twitter. I thought it was such a unique moment in history and me being the tech guy that I am, I immediately knew I had to do whatever it took to get the rights to turn this iconic moment into an NFT.”
Non-fungible tokens are cryptographic assets on a blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from each other.
The video clip captured by the fan shows Brown storming off the field shirtless to end his career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their game against the New York Jets.
The clip shows Brown heaving his uniform into the crowd and was seen by an estimated 11.6 million people on Twitter. The footage was licensed and played across the internet and top news networks with more than 50 million people seeing it across all mediums. TV broadcast cameras didn’t pick up on the incident right away because it happened during the game.
Savar’s NFT sale potentially could shake up the sports memorabilia market as the buyer will not only own a unique part of sports history but would also be able to monetize it in the future in the metaverse, the release said. Brown has no affiliation with the project, but the athlete, who at one time was in the Las Vegas Raiders’ preseason training camp, did repost a news clip about the NFT sale on his Instagram account early Wednesday.
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.