As fan interactions with entertainers and entertainment properties increasingly move to the virtual realm, Hollywood’s current NFT gold rush finds companies panning up and down the blockchain and decentralized web in an effort to extend their brands.
The announcements are coming fast and furious. The end game for the media companies? Bringing audiences even closer to their beloved storylines and characters—and making bank along the way. The NFT market ballooned to $41 billion in 2021, and investment bank Jeffries just raised its market-cap forecast for NFTs to more than $80 billion for 2025.
Tim Haldorsson, founder and CEO of Lunar Strategy, a marketing agency that specializes in cryptocurrency, says the entertainment industry’s crypto obsession is only just beginning but not all iterations will see equal success.
“I do believe that it will be NFTs that provide different kinds of utility that will grow the most,” Haldorsson says. “For example, owning the NFT gives you X percent of the streaming rights or it gives you X percent of the merchandise sales.”
The best offerings, he notes, “enable users to invest in influencers like they are ‘shares in a company,’ meaning fans share of a part of their success. When the fan has a financial incentive to support the TV show, influencer or media, the relationship between the two will be even stronger.”
Warner Bros. and its superhero subsidiary DC are onboard. DC staged its first foray in October, gifting free NFTs of its superhero comic book covers to people who registered for its FanDome event. Warner Bros. last fall partnered with the Nifty marketplace to release “Matrix” avatars, priced at $50 apiece, and in December backed ethereum-fueled outfit Palm NFT Studio as part of Palm’s $27 million funding round.
Lionsgate also jumped on the blockchain bandwagon, teaming with Autograph, the NFT platform launched by the NFL’s Tom Brady, in a partnership that will see the creation of content based on its TV and film properties including “Mad Men,” “John Wick,” “Hunger Games,” the “Twilight” franchise and “Dirty Dancing.”
ViacomCBS this spring is set to unveil in partnership with tech firm Recur a centralized platform with dedicated channels through which fans can buy and trade collectible digital assets based on its vast IP library. BET, CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures are among the brands headed to the metaverse.
“We are creating a fully immersive and interactive experience that will allow fans to interact with our IP in an entirely different way,” Pam Kaufman, president of global consumer products for ViacomCBS, tells XLIVE. “Rooted in community building, this space will celebrate the breadth of our library, encourage peer-to-peer engagement and facilitate innovative ways for users to unlock new experiences.”
While most companies thus far are going the third-party route, Fox Entertainment and its animation studio Bento Box last May hung their own shingle, Blockchain Creative Labs (BLC), housed entirely within the company. Fox also established a $100 million fund to enable content creators, IP owners and brand partners to builld and sell NFTs.
The name of the new business unit is intentional, BLC CEO Scott Greenberg tells XLIVE. “Blockchain—we believe in blockchain technology. Creative—we are a creative company across entertainment and sports. And Labs – we have many hypotheses, and we want to prove them,” he says.
Chief among the theories the company is out to prove is that a sizable portion of the mainstream audiences Fox serves will embrace the crypto realm with proper education, a safe environment and easy to digest price points.
The company is taking baby steps but so far, the premise is proving out. Its first foray the MaskVerse, a marketplace and community hawking digital assets that complement its competition series “The Masked Singer,” in October unleashed packs of three mask NFTs, which each carried a $20 price tag. They sold out 10,000 packs in the first 10 hours, Greenberg says. To boot, the activation garnered 200,000 digital wallet installs (To participate, fans had to create a wallet through Eluvio, the blockchain infrastructure provider in which Fox is an investor).
At $20 a pop, MaskVerse packs were on the very low end compared to other entertainment NFT offerings. All by design, says Greenberg. “We didn’t go looking for the headline of, ‘Fox did X Million Dollars.’ We have a long-term goal of educating fans and creating value for the community. We’re gong to make revenue, we’re a revenue-generating business, but this is about education and learning and process.”
Next up from Blockchain Creative Labs is a dedicated digital marketplace for WWE centered around the “Smackdown” franchise, which is slated to premiere in the spring.
BCL is also conjuring a virtual market that will center around Dan Harmon’s upcoming adult animated series “Krapopolis,” which is produced by Bento Box and is the television industry’s first-ever animated series curated entirely on the blockchain. NFTs and GIFs are in the works, as are tokens that will unlock exclusive social experiences for fans.
Community Service
The existence of virtual microcommunities around NFT properties has quickly emerged as a magnetic component not only for fueling the red-hot secondary market but engaging buyers and providing them with continually evolving value.
That’s the plan at ViacomCBS, where Kaufman says the company opted to partner with Recur not solely because of its chain-agnostic approach and knowledge about both crypto and licensing.
“Importantly, the team also has a deep understanding of fostering community around passions and fan engagement, which is critical to our efforts. We want to meet the consumer where they are to make NFTs accessible to the experienced and novice collector alike,” she says.
Greenberg says community was key to activating the “Masked Singer” audience in the cryoto realm, noting there are several dynamics at work in the virtual neighborhood. “There is social flex, proving you’re a fan of something, basically showing off. There’s utility and collecting, and then there’s value,” he says.