Cristiano Ronaldo has been hit with a $1bn (£791m) class action lawsuit for his involvement in promoting NFT's.
Adam Monk takes a deeper look at why this seems to keep happening to not just footballers, but celebrities too.
Adam Monk takes a deeper look at why this seems to keep happening to not just footballers, but celebrities too.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 Hello again, everyone.
00:06 Adam here from 442.
00:08 Now, who remembers NFTs?
00:10 What were that all about?
00:11 Yeah, those kind of like digital things
00:15 that everyone could kind of just screenshot.
00:17 You remember the, what was it called here?
00:18 Let me have a look.
00:19 The Ape Kids Club that John Terry used to flog
00:22 a couple of years ago that kind of went down the pan.
00:25 Well, they're back.
00:25 And this time it's to do with Cristiano Ronaldo.
00:29 Yeah, reason being Mr. Cristiano Ronaldo
00:32 could be facing up to a $1 billion lawsuit
00:34 after launching his own NFT collection in late 2023.
00:39 Like this ended two years ago, really, in my opinion.
00:42 But anyway, let's talk about it.
00:44 Now, first and foremost,
00:45 I find NFTs myself a little bit bizarre.
00:48 I was told an analogy this morning about them
00:51 that kind of makes sense, so I'll relay it to you.
00:53 But imagine you were in the Louvre in Paris, in France.
00:57 Obviously, you know where Paris is.
00:58 And you're looking at the Mona Lisa.
01:00 Obviously, that is available to public view
01:02 if you buy a ticket in there.
01:03 And it's in an art gallery.
01:05 It's on public display.
01:06 You can gather around and look at the Mona Lisa,
01:09 a famous piece of artwork.
01:10 However, an NFT would be if the Mona Lisa was there
01:14 and everyone can look at it,
01:15 but in the Louvre, there's a little cupboard around the back
01:18 that only I have access into.
01:20 And in that cupboard, there's a plaque that says,
01:22 "Adam Monk owns the Mona Lisa."
01:25 That's what an NFT basically is.
01:27 You kind of have some like little digital code
01:30 that says you own it, but everyone can just see the image.
01:34 And yeah, people are spending thousands of pounds
01:36 on this still.
01:38 So what has actually happened?
01:39 Well, in the run-up to last year's World Cup in Qatar,
01:42 Cristiano Ronaldo partnered with the company Binance,
01:46 you might be aware.
01:47 Now, Binance are the world's largest crypto exchange group,
01:50 and Cristiano Ronaldo has launched his own collection
01:52 of NFTs through them.
01:54 And these NFTs depict some iconic moments of his career.
01:58 So the over a kick against Juventus,
02:01 the goal for Manchester United in Porto
02:03 in the Champions League, you remember that one,
02:06 lifting Euro 2016 as well, that'll be another one.
02:09 And perhaps being compared to Lionel Messi as well,
02:13 although I'm not sure how you'd capture that
02:15 in NFT picture form,
02:17 but that should be an iconic moment for him too.
02:19 So some of the rarest collectibles
02:20 in Ronaldo's NFT collection
02:22 have sold for up to 10,000 pounds.
02:25 But aggrieved customers claim that his endorsement
02:30 has led them to make costly and unsafe investments.
02:35 And this lawsuit has come a week after Binance
02:38 reached a $4 billion settlement with US regulators,
02:41 sparking the shock resignation of Chang Peng Zhao
02:44 as the CEO.
02:46 So there's a lot going down over in the world at Binance.
02:49 Yes, the billionaire Chang Peng Zhao,
02:51 the CEO, the ex CEO of Binance is facing prison time.
02:54 He gets sentenced next year.
02:57 This is because he's pleaded guilty
02:58 to breaching anti-money laundering laws
03:02 at the top of the company.
03:03 It says here that according to the lawsuit,
03:05 Binance's NFT sales were driven
03:07 with the willing help and assistance
03:09 of some of the wealthiest, powerful,
03:11 and recognized organizations and celebrities
03:13 across the world, including Ronaldo himself.
03:17 And yeah, also says there,
03:18 he's pretty much been used as a poster boy for Binance.
03:21 I mean, who can blame them for that?
03:22 Because look, the search for Binance
03:24 has surged by 500% there after his collection was announced.
03:27 So he has got a bit of clout as Cristiano.
03:30 Court findings have apparently stated
03:32 that Ronaldo should have disclosed
03:34 how much he was being paid for the partnership with Binance,
03:36 which he hasn't actually announced to the courts.
03:39 And recently as well, only two days ago, in fact,
03:41 so Ronaldo so far has not commented on the situation,
03:44 but he has come out and said that he is cooking something up
03:48 with Binance.
03:48 So in the face of a $1 billion lawsuit,
03:51 I think there's more NFTs on the way
03:53 for you NFT lovers out there.
03:55 I'm gonna be honest with you,
03:56 reading this article that I've got in front of me here
03:59 is absolutely insane.
04:01 I'm just gonna have to show you this quote.
04:03 "Demands for NFTs have plunged in recent months
04:06 following a dizzying bubble that saw images
04:08 of cartoon rocks sell for millions of dollars,
04:11 with everyone from Donald Trump to Snoop Dogg
04:14 launching their own collections."
04:16 So to be fair, in many ways,
04:19 John Terry might have been somewhat of a trendsetter
04:21 because he was really the first public figure
04:22 that I can remember who started selling NFTs.
04:25 If you've got the ex-president of the United States
04:27 and Snoop Dogg himself coming out and selling them now,
04:30 then it must have had some impact in the celebrity world,
04:33 especially given that Snoop Dogg recently quit smoke,
04:36 if you remember that one.
04:37 So maybe he's quit smoke to go and start selling NFTs.
04:41 I don't know, but that is just mad to me
04:43 that two people like Trump and Snoop Dogg
04:45 are getting involved as well.
04:47 And just by doing further reading here,
04:48 it does seem to be that most of these NFT firms
04:51 and crypto firms, they just tend to keep facing lawsuits
04:55 and going bankrupt.
04:56 So you're seeing more A-listers now,
04:58 like Larry David, tennis star Naomi Osaka,
05:01 and Tom Brady as well, being sued for their role
05:04 in promoting the doomed crypto exchange FTX,
05:07 which went bust in November, 2022.
05:09 So they're all going bust.
05:10 They're not making much money,
05:12 but the items are being sold for a lot.
05:14 I just, I don't know.
05:16 I don't claim to be an expert on NFTs,
05:18 but what I do have a understanding of
05:20 is supply and demand.
05:21 You know, in simple terms,
05:24 you might need to go and buy some fruit.
05:26 Everyone needs to go and buy some fruit every now and then.
05:28 So there'll always be a demand for fruit.
05:31 Therefore, the supply of fruit will always be there.
05:33 And it's sort of like a healthy,
05:35 mutual financial relationship
05:36 where customers buy the fruit at higher costs
05:39 and it costs to grow.
05:41 And that's how money is made.
05:42 Whereas NFTs, it doesn't seem like the demand
05:45 is really there for a piece of pixel art
05:48 or a little graphic of Ronaldo suing.
05:51 And who can blame anyone?
05:53 That just seems like a mental, mental purchase to me.
05:57 So in the midst of me trying to understand NFTs
06:00 and why people are even buying them in the first place,
06:01 I thought we'd play a quick game of
06:04 cool things you can spend $10,000 on
06:07 instead of pixel art of Cristiano Ronaldo.
06:10 In at number one, you yourself could go on
06:13 one of Gary Neville's holidays.
06:15 - I call that a mini retirement.
06:17 - Oh, sorry, Gary.
06:18 Yep, a mini retirement.
06:20 You could go to Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, anywhere.
06:23 You name it.
06:23 Just go for a weekend, two or three days,
06:26 kick your feet back, buy some drinks,
06:27 have a bit of food, soak up the sun,
06:29 and that'll be less than 10 grand.
06:31 In at number two, you could get yourself a ticket
06:34 for this year's UEFA Champions League final
06:37 with prices starting at just 1,274 pounds.
06:41 So you'd have about eight grand spare as well
06:43 to spend on whatever you wanted
06:45 in that little trip to London.
06:46 And the benefit of this is that you can actually
06:48 go and watch footballers kicking a ball,
06:51 take your own pictures of said footballers kicking a ball,
06:54 and then they are yours,
06:55 unless you choose to post them online
06:56 in which people can screenshot them,
06:58 very much like they can with an NFT,
07:00 but you can really have your own collection
07:02 of perhaps a footballer's most iconic moment themselves
07:05 in a Champions League final,
07:07 and you get to be there.
07:08 So it's not just a picture of a monkey or Ronaldo.
07:11 So that's another sensible investment.
07:13 And in at number three,
07:14 you could pay to get me a green screen.
07:16 Yep, I'm working on it.
07:18 It's just 'cause of the shape of the ceiling,
07:20 which I'll fix.
07:21 Just kind of hard to like string it across here
07:24 and have it covering.
07:25 I'll figure it out.
07:26 I'll figure it out over the weekend.
07:28 Now, what are the parallels between this case
07:29 and the John Terry case?
07:30 Well, not many, because this is a partnership
07:32 for Cristiano Ronaldo with Binance,
07:35 whereas John Terry and his NFT scheme,
07:37 Kids 8 Football Club,
07:39 was actually something that was founded by himself
07:41 and lost 99% of its value over a year period.
07:45 So John Terry has lost more of his actual own money,
07:47 whereas this is something where Ronaldo is in partnership
07:50 with the trading platform
07:51 and has perhaps been used as a little bit of a pawn piece
07:54 in a wider chess game for the company,
07:56 as a bit of a poster boy to flog these NFTs
07:59 at such a high price.
08:00 It is all a little bit shady though.
08:02 I guess we'll just have to wait and see
08:04 as to what happens really,
08:05 if Ronaldo does end up facing the billion dollar lawsuit
08:08 and whether it goes through,
08:09 'cause I mean, he's a very powerful man
08:11 and he's working in partnership
08:13 with a very rich company as well.
08:15 And if he does lose a billion dollars,
08:16 I'm sure he'll have a few change spare as well
08:19 to keep himself going.
08:20 He's a pretty well off bloke, Ronaldo,
08:22 but NFTs in general just make no sense to me
08:27 and never ever have and never will.
08:30 And I'm surprised that I'm still talking about them
08:32 and that a story has come up today
08:34 about them because I thought they were
08:36 a thing of the past really, but apparently not.
08:39 Anyway, you can let me know what you think
08:40 about NFTs in general in the comments down below
08:43 and just enjoy the weekend.
08:45 We've got some big games coming up,
08:46 City, Tottenham, Newcastle, United as well.
08:50 So the picture in the Premier League
08:51 will look very different come Monday.
08:53 So I'm sure me and Adam will have a lot to say about it.
08:56 So have a lovely weekend, enjoy yourselves.
08:59 I've been Adam Monk.
09:00 Have a great one.
09:01 See you soon.