In late December, sports apparel brand Under Armour celebrated brand ambassador and basketball super star Steph Curry breaking the NBA’s three-point record (on 14 December) with a collection of Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) to mark the milestone and which are applicable across multiple metaverse platforms.
The digital tokens were based around the brand’s ‘Genesis Curry Flow’ signature sneaker – which the Golden State Warriors point guard wore when he made league history – are consist of 2,974 virtual copies of the digital shoe.
Thus representing the number of three-point shots Curry completed to break the record previously held by Ray Allen.
Priced at $333 with all proceeds benefiting charities focused on increasing youth access to sports, the initial NFT offering sold out and yet rapidly became available on secondary marketplace OpenSea.
Under Armour’s PR work around the initiative claims that the digital collection ‘represents the first wearable cross-platform NFTs for users of Decentraland, Gala Games, Sandbox and Rumble Kong League.
Designed alongside WPP creative agency Berlin Cameron with NFT production company NewKino and marketplace Luna, the collection is positioned to address some of the criticisms and scepticisms around NFTs: specifically that the format doesn’t truly offer significant value – either creatively, usefully or in monetary terms.
Thus, the drop also includes an element of gamification enabling those who buy one of the Genesis Curry Flow pieces to virtually wear across multiple metaverse services. The gaming features include the ability to purchase digital avatar ‘skins’.
“While NFT and Metaverse have become the buzz words of our industry this year. Most brand work has basically been about jpegs you can use as a profile picture,” said Berlin Cameron founder Ewen Cameron. “With the stature of Stephen’s achievement, we wanted to do something that truly ‘changed the metaverse game for good,’ and so the notion of the first sneaker that can travel across the platform and have genuine functionality and performance was born.”
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This was one of Under Armour’s first forays into the rocketing NFT market – a trend as red hot as curry’s three-point shooting.
Its NFT tactic here is a clear attempt to make the digital/virtual collectibles more tangible to a segment of consumers still somewhat sceptical of their utility and value.
Curry has been a long-time anchor ambassador for the sportswear brand and the virtual marketing initiative also doubles as an opportunity to promote its Genesis Curry Flow line of sneakers which the point guard is currently wearing on the court and which is part of Undre Armour’s signature Curry Brand collection.
Other sportswear marketers to jump on the NFT bandwagon in the sneaker/memorabilia space include adidas’ recent partnership with Bored Apes Yacht Club on a virtual collection which has been reported to have generated $22m in sales and Nike’s earlier acquisition of virtual collectible studio RTFKT as well as its ‘Nikeland’ digital headquarter initiative in ROBLOX.
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