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How NFT's can bring a fresh new perspective to the NFL and other sports

In a new interview with Decrypt's Editor-in-Chief Dan Roberts, Caty Tedman of Dapper Labs explains how NFT's can bring a fresh new experience to pro-sport fans.

Video Transcript

DAN ROBERTS: I'm Dan Roberts, the editor-in-chief of Decrypt. And next up, I'll be speaking to Caty Tedman, the head of partnerships at Dapper Labs. Caty was instrumental in bringing Dapper's NBA Top Shot NFT platform to life. And she's also struck up deals for NFTs with LaLiga, the WNBA, and most recently, the NFL. Before Dapper Labs, Caty worked at the NHL, the NFL, and ESPN.

CATY TEDMAN: OK, hi, Caty. Thanks for joining us.

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CATY TEDMAN: Hey, it's great to see you.

DAN ROBERTS: Great to see you. Thanks to Yahoo Finance for having us. Things have kind of come full circle because when we spoke back in 2017, Dapper was CryptoKitties. And nowadays, I mean, you've got so much going on, but I'd say you're first associated with NBA Top Shot. We will get into Top Shot and everything else you guys are up to, but let me start this way. We spoke back in March for a different event, and you were telling me that, hey, when we first partnered with the NBA, we were a risk for them. You said we were CryptoKitties. We had clogged up Ethereum.

And, you know, we're here at this Yahoo Finance event. It's kind of a more broad mass audience. I don't want to assume that everyone is a crypto history expert. So why don't we start by reminding everyone, you know, what CryptoKitties was. This was before we were even using the term NFT widely. And what happened with CryptoKitties's popularity?

CATY TEDMAN: Yeah, so we launched CryptoKitties at the end of 2017 which seems like a lifetime ago now. And really, all we set out to do there was to show that you could do other stuff with blockchain other than decentralized finance. When you talk about what you should prototype on the internet, we said we got to talk ourselves out of cats. It's got to start with cats. And if we think of something else, that's great. But we landed on cats. The internet loves cats.

And really, you know, what we put together was a pretty simple product, which was a breeding game. You either buy or breed cats. And then that results in different genetic match-ups. And what we saw was that it really captured consumer attention as something that was a good proof case for how blockchain could be used to put data on chain, to create engagement mechanisms.

Our CTO, Dieter Shirley, wrote the ERC 721 standard or the first version of that, which kind of helped catalyze what would be an NFT, as opposed to a fungible token. We got into non-fungible tokens, which, back then, you said NFT to someone, and they were like, I have no idea what you're talking about. And now it's a little more commonplace. But I think what we always try to do is create experiences for fans and create experiences for people that are fun and engaging.

And so, it seems crazy to go from cats to the NBA, but really, for us, it was a logical transition. We proved that there could be something really interesting with CryptoKitties. And then we said, how do we reach people? And the NBA was a great way to do that.

DAN ROBERTS: Yeah, nowadays, I mean, I think Dapper is heavily associated with sports. You know, I mentioned NBA Top Shot, which was a big hit. Now, recently, you guys have announced that an NFL platform is coming. And that's enormous for you guys. I mean, for this audience, talk to us about approaching pro sports leagues.

When you want to partner with them and you're trying to kind of do multiple things at once, you're saying, let us launch this platform, but also, in many cases, I imagine, let us explain to you how the NFT world works and why you need to be in this. The NFL, to me, is a big coup. I mean, I used to focus on sports business. I know how hesitant the NFL often is to do certain deals. And this stuff, in many ways, is kind of bleeding edge. So kind of walk us through what the Dapper pitch to sports leagues is. You guys are also now working with the WNBA and LaLiga.

CATY TEDMAN: Yeah, we started-- we were lucky to start with the NBA. We were lucky that Adrienne O'Keeffe over at the NBA is, like, OG crypto woman and was, like, super interested in this space at the same time that we were approaching them. At that time, it was a lot of explanation, and we spent a lot of time with lawyers and people in finance to talk about, like, what does it look like to have secondary revenue? You don't have secondary revenue on merchandise, right? eBay doesn't give the NBA or NFL a cut.

What does it look like to have ownership in perpetuity of assets for consumers? I mean, you have that in a physical space, but you don't say it in that way. And it's pretty unusual in a digital space. So there was a lot of education really early on.

I think what we've seen is that NBA Top Shot has proven that there's something there. We have, you know, almost 1.2 million people registered on the platform. There have been almost 14 million transactions, 10 million of those just peer to peer. And we're talking about a year, right? We've really only been live for about a year. And so, the conversations have shifted dramatically, where I think there's a little bit of an understanding that there's something here.

I meet very little resistance these days that NFTs are a thing, which, you know, back then, there might have been a discussion around that. And now it's more about, how do we create a really interesting and unique environment? I think when we look at the NFL or LaLiga, we don't want to just rinse, repeat on NBA Top Shot. We want to take the stuff we've learned there. But football is a week to week sport, right? Like, you watch that totally differently than you do the basketball season. And so, now the conversation is really around, how do we build for your fans? How do we talk to your fans? How do you talk to your fans?

DAN ROBERTS: Well, and I wanted to push you more for specifics on that. I mean, maybe we can break some news here today. But, you know, you told us at Decrypt when you guys announced this NFL deal was coming that, as you just said, we can't just slap NFL players on NBA Top Shot and make it work. It has to fit the sport, it has to be different. So what might that look like? And, you know, we should probably say, Caty, for anyone who somehow still doesn't know it, and it's obvious to me, what NBA Top Shots are, the NFTs are, video clips, these files, video clips of plays. They have a cool animated intro. And they are provably unique on blockchain. What might that look like when we translate it to the NFL?

CATY TEDMAN: When you look at the differences between sports, I think looking at the way fans consume that sport. So, again, like, we're going to be really kind of week to week focused with the NFL, where that doesn't necessarily make sense for the NBA, when we look at the kind of data that we put on chain. So they're video-based assets, but they have a ton of metadata that goes on chain. And that means somebody in the future could build something really cool that we haven't even thought about today.

The industry is about a year old, right? Nobody knows-- maybe not even a year. Nobody really knows where it's going to go. And so, all of that data on chain is going to be really interesting to what comes next. And all of those kind of pieces that wrap around it have to be different. It has to feel different. The kind of plays we pick are going to be different. The way we drop them will have to be different. When you come into the site, you're going to have a different experience of surfacing content and information, again, because the sport is different and the fans are different.

I think we're going to have a little bit of education to do to start out with. Basketball fans know that Top Shot exists, I think, at this point. But football fans don't necessarily. And if you look at that fan base, it's a bit different maybe demographically. And so I think we want to always start with the fans and what they care about. We're doing for LaLiga everything in Spanish and English. So it's a Spanish league. We have to start in Spanish. We know that we have a great interest in NFTs in North America, and we also want to be activating in English. But that product is going to have to be totally different for that reason.

DAN ROBERTS: You know, a lot of the people in this audience today have a real investing focus. And when they look at crypto as a whole space, their question might just be, should I get into this? And, you know, with NBA Top Shot, you guys kind of had two types of fans using it at the beginning among kind of the initial frenzy, which was regular NBA fans. They might be young people. And they were just buying the base level, you know, $9 pack of collectibles because they think it's cool.

You also had people who were buying them up, and maybe they're already people with a little money to invest. You know, Mark Cuban was into Top Shot, and some of the people into it were players. And they were buying and then watching the value accrue and, in some cases, flipping Top Shot NFTs for big money. I guess I'd ask, you know, and maybe not just about Top Shot, but NFTs in general, what would you say to people at this event who are just wondering, is this a good investment? Should I be buying NFTs, even if I don't really fully understand them?

CATY TEDMAN: My feeling is that you should buy stuff you like. It's the same thing as like buying a watch. You're not going to-- maybe people do. But maybe you don't want to, right, buy an ugly watch because it's worth-- you think it's going to be worth a lot. You buy something that you want to wear. And then if it accrues in value, that's amazing. And so I think I would always tell people, start with the thing you like, start with the thing that you know. Part of the fun about, quote unquote, "investing" in NBA Top Shots is, if you love basketball, you're really doing a little bit the same you do in fantasy, where you're making choices, and you've got to see how the choices play out.

DAN ROBERTS: We've been talking, Caty, mostly about NFTs and, you know, throwing around some of these acronyms, DeFi and NFTs. Here's another one I almost hesitate to bring up, but DAOs, D-A-O, which is Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. You guys recently announced that you are acquiring this platform called Brud, B-R-U-D. And it's all about creating DAOs. Some people believe that DAOs are the future of work. Talk to us about this acquisition, and is this a huge kind of category shift for you guys from NFTs, now getting into DAOs?

CATY TEDMAN: I don't think it's a category shift. I think we're really interested in how blockchain technology can impact people's lives and impacts consumers. And if you look at a decentralized autonomous organization, there's something there that puts the ability for people to make their own decisions, and then not to have middlemen in some different ways. Trevor, who, you know, is coming over to Dapper as part of that acquisition, is incredibly creative, is super forward thinking.

And so, when we look at people joining our team, whether it's by hiring or acquisition, we try to find great people who are going to push the boundaries of the way we think about things and push the boundaries about the way our team thinks about things. And so, moving into a space where we're experimenting with DAOs and bringing someone in who's launched Friends with Benefits, an extremely successful DAO, is great. We're going to learn a lot as a team. We're going to try to find ways to expose more consumers to that construct.

And again, really, all we're trying to do is proof of concept in most of these cases. Hey, here's a new way to use technology. Can we make it interesting? Can we make it valuable and fun? And I think Trevor is the guy who's going to be able to do that.

DAN ROBERTS: Decentralization, that's the name of the game. Well, Caty, we've got to leave it there. We could talk for so much longer. But thank you so much, a lot of interesting stuff going on. And we'll chat again soon.

CATY TEDMAN: Thanks for having me.

DAN ROBERTS: Great talking to Caty Tedman. And I just want to remind all the viewers watching that we at Decrypt are partnering with Yahoo Finance on an all day live crypto event. It's called Crypto Goes Mainstream. And the whole day will stream on Yahoo Finance on November 9, so don't miss that.