Liverpool projected to earn more than £8.5m from controversial NFT sales

Liverpool’s controversial release of over 170,000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) later this month has been projected to raise more than £8.5 million for the club.

Earlier this week, Liverpool announced their launch of a new collection of NFTs, with the club stating that 50 percent of their funds raised will go to the LFC Foundation.

The LFC Heroes Club will include digital illustrations of 23 first-team players along with Jurgen Klopp in various poses and costumes, with 24 ‘Legendary’ and 171,072 ‘Hero’ tokens up for sale.

‘Hero’ tokens will be priced at around £57, with these “randomly generated” and only “revealed once the sale comes to an end,” while an auction will be held for the ‘Legendary’ tokens.

Below their headline claim over that 50 percent, however, it is explained that half of the proceeds from ‘Legendary’ collectables will go to the LFC Foundation, along with 10 percent of ‘Hero’ tokens and 10 percent from future resales.

As noted by The Athletic‘s Caoimhe O’Neill and Joey D’Urso, the club could then earn “more than £8.5 million” from the sale of their NFT collection.

This is based on the potential £9,751,104 raised from selling all of the ‘Hero’ collectibles, with just under £1 million of that then going to the LFC Foundation.

However, it is explained that “any unsold NFTs will be taken out of circulation,” with the critical reaction from many fans to the launch suggesting that Liverpool could fall way short of that mark in terms of sales.

On top of the obvious risk for buyers in terms of the value of NFTs dropping following their purchase, it is explained that their production has, despite claims to the contrary, a “really massive carbon footprint.”

Liverpool state that “the three-day sale will run and be managed on an energy-efficient blockchain called Polygon,” but analyst Alex de Vries told The Athletic otherwise.

De Vries’ research suggested a now-withdrawn range of NFTs produced by the World Wildlife Fund last month, also using Polygon, emitted 2,100 times more carbon than was claimed.

“If you are going to do something with Polygon, you are using the Ethereum network, it’s as simple as that,” he explained, with Ethereum notorious for its use of energy.

“Anything that is built on Ethereum is going to have a really massive carbon footprint. Polygon literally cannot run without Ethereum.”

It is not explained where the remaining 90 percent of funds raised by the sales of Liverpool’s ‘Hero’ NFTs will go, nor the other 50 percent from the 24 ‘Legendary’ tokens.