Autograph relaunches as a fan platform, dropping NFTs after Tom Brady's FTX troubles

The rollout of the fan platform completes a major shift in direction for Autograph, which initially launched as a NFT digital collectible marketplace

National Football League (NFL) legend Tom Brady’s sports technology startup, Autograph, has relaunched as a fan platform, ditching the non-fungible token (NFT) functionality that was central to its original pitch.

Launched back in 2021, Autograph set out to become a digital collectible marketplace for NFTs, securing up to US$200 million in funding from athletes and tech executives. Tennis star Naomi Osaka and Apple’s senior vice president of services Eddy Cue were among the investors. It also struck up agreements with major rights holders such as golf’s PGA Tour.

But the fan platform rollout marks a major shift in direction for Autograph. NFT space has seen a downturn, and Brady himself encountered troubles as an ambassador for collapsed crypto firm FTX.

Now boldly declaring itself to be the “most comprehensive and personalised fan experience in sports”, Autograph: Sports Fandom will aggregate content like social posts, audio and videos into a single destination, rewarding users for consuming it.

The new platform aggregates a network of over 3,800 creators, blogs, social accounts, YouTube channels and podcasts, covering more than 240 professional and college sports teams.

Fans set their favourite teams and are then served a personalised feed of this creator-led content, powered by artificial intelligence (AI). They are awarded ‘coins’ for each item they consume and other “acts of fandom”.

These coins can be used to unlock access to exclusive items such as tickets, merchandise or memorabilia, as well as in-person experiences. While participants in this network will benefit from traffic and impressions, Autograph hopes to monetise this fandom through ecommerce and other revenue streams.

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“We’re pulling together awesome content from top creators all in one place, so we can give fans an amazing experience and really show how much we appreciate everything they do,” said Brady.

Autograph’s platform has spent the past year in an invite-only beta phase featuring creators covering the University of Michigan Wolverines college football team – Brady’s alma mater. Among the rewards on offer were discounted tickets to the College Football Playoff (CFP) semi-finals and finals, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) March Madness college basketball tournaments.

So far, the platform says it has attracted “tens of thousands of fans” who have spent a total of 211,000 hours on the application, recording more than two million acts of fandom and collecting over 16.5 million coins. More than 270,000 offers have been redeemed, and Autograph is scaling out the model to other teams and more sports.

“Autograph’s mission has always been to connect communities of fans more deeply with the teams, icons, and properties that they love,” said Dillon Rosenblatt, chief executive and co-founder of Autograph. “We’ve now evolved the platform to be able to engage even more fan communities in innovative ways. We’re powering daily sports content for fans, using our Passport feature to quantify and recognise fandom, and ultimately striving to leverage our technology to give more meaning and recognition to fans everywhere.”