Tennis star Andy Murray NFT features 18 years of stats
Murray’s first NFT dropped in 2021 and sold at auction for $177,777
Yuya Chiu/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
In the latest indicator of a professional athlete vying to cash in on NFTs, British tennis player Andy Murray and Wimbledon have dropped a digital collectibles collection.
Murray tapped the artist Refik Anadol to drop his second NFT last Friday. His first hit the market, under a different partnership, in 2021.
Called The Exposition, Murray’s collection was launched on the 10th anniversary of his first Wimbledon victory. It pulled together data from his 18-year Wimbledon career — he won Grand Slam singles titles in 2013 and 2016 — into a “digital sculpture.”
The project took into account millions of data points, ranging from Murray’s career statistics to motion, audio and visual representations.
The NFTs, 170 in all, have been produced in partnership with Manifold XYZ. The floor price on OpenSea is 0.1 ETH or about $187.
Anadol had prior experience creating artwork based on sizable data sets, often taking on pieces that rendered high-profile locations. He has created a machine intelligence-generated visualization on the facade of the Walt Disney Concert Hall using 45 terabytes of data from the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
It appears that Murray’s latest NFT may be the start of an enduring collaboration with Anadol — it’s been dubbed their “inaugural” collection.
Holders of the current edition — the auction closes in a little over six days — are set to eventually have an “exclusive” right to buy a physical print edition of the NFT, which will be produced by Avant Arte.
Another top tennis player, 19-year-old American Cori “Coco” Gauff, has gotten in on the trend of tying digital collectibles to athletic endeavors. Gauff dropped two NFT collections in early June, with one retailing for $200 and another going for $500.
Other sports leagues, including Major League Baseball, have gotten their own crypto-linked ambitions off the ground.
The MLB introduced a “virtual ballpark” experience featuring an NFT scavenger hunt that happened shortly before the upcoming 2023 All-Star game on Tuesday.
Formula One, too, has jumped into NFTs, using them as ticket entry points for the Monaco Grand Prix.
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