Should we pursue rebranding FTX arena to ApeCoin Arena?

The idea sounds silly but if the hope for apecoin is to become a diverse functional token with application both in the metaverse and normal life, what better way to reach an audience of millions than branding on an arena?

Add to that the narrative background of Miami as the hometown of the Yuga founders, Miami’s desire to be a prestigious cryptohub, and their current name being that of a cryptocurrency exchange. While the cost is undoubtedly extraordinary (FTX paid ~7mill with a 19 year contract), naming rights could open the doors to further collaboration and use cases for apecoin on a much wider scale than we’ve seen thus far and be a launching point for a myriad of ideas (streetwear pop-shop, heat tickets purchasable via $ape, etc.) all while advertising itself on national television to viewers across the country multiple nights a week.

The idea is very raw and just that - an idea. But I believe there is potential enough to consider as an aggressive way to permeate mainstream culture and drive big awareness to Apecoin.

If there is enough interest in the idea and we develop it further into a doable, actionable idea, I will make it an AIP draft.

Dilly Dilly!

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Welcome to the forums @dillydilly ! It’s great to see Apes starting to get involved more with the DAO!

The first Guiding Value of the DAO comes to mind:

Boldness: We don’t shy away from the weird, the hard, or the new.

In Los Angeles, SoFi stadium integrates the use of all their products in the stadium. I only use SoFi products for purchases because of the discounts within the stadium. Imagine making purchases in APE? Some large idea like this would certainly open doors for collaboration.

Cost may sound large on the surface, but it’s not much if you present value it. I have a few of unanswered questions to think about, but at this idea stage, they aren’t important.

Nothing to lose by getting feedback so it’s great that you put this out there :slight_smile:

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Welcome in @dillydilly! I saw this idea floating around on Twitter so it’s great you brought it to the forums for discussion!

What a coincidence it just happens to be in Miami too.

My initial list of questions are:

  1. I wanted to clarify, the old deal was ~$7 million per year right? Just trying to understand logistics and make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I think I saw someone bid $10 million for one year of naming rights in the last day or so. Not 100% sure what that involves though.

  2. Are there any regulatory concerns around this, such as promotion? Others companies like Coinbase put their name on things but I can’t remember a token doing so.

Thanks for bringing this forward!

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Thank you for sharing this idea with us Dilly!! I’m so glad you were able to post the AIP idea, warmest of welcomes to the Discourse ApeCoin community!

I hope you will look around & explore all the ideas we have brewing here, I’m so excited to see your input :smiley:

The concept of renaming the FTX Arena to ApeCoin Arena is also so exciting because of all the Yuga IP brands being developed in our ecosystem- we could have the venue only sell Ape Water (Ape Water Powered by ApeCoin) , or invite Bored & Hungry and such food brands as food vendors. We could have a space for irl shops where people can buy our physical IP products, collectible POAPs for each event, and so much more synergy waiting to be unlocked!

@Harry would probably be able to give more insight on how having a physical arena space would allow us better distribution & synergy with current & future IP holders & projects. I’ve attached his IP Ecosystem Map here for everyone’s reference!

Excited for us to continue the discussion!

-Halina.eth :cherry_blossom:

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Not sure if we should do this considering the large amount cost of branding. Personally, I’m not a big fan of naming arenas with cryptos. Each time I saw news about naming or sponsoring big sports, I doubted how much return they get due to most crypto firms are still in the early stage (compared to the traditional companies, 32B valued FTX was still small). But this idea brought up a good direction, maybe there are other branding partnerships (costs much less) that we could seek for.

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Common physical IP use case for the web3 IP

In the past, BAYC holders once pay advertising to show BAYC in billboards. Now the situation is reversed as BAYC has become a cultural brand.

Why brands want to have BAYC IP for their products?

  • Genz and web3 target audience with a reach of 1M+
  • Brand awareness and cultural impact
  • Being the first mover in a vertical
  • Drive sales through community engagement
  • Crowd source story development

Where we are at now?

Tier 1 brands are in R&D mode. Adidas, Gucci, Nike, Samsung all have internal team to focus this matter. They are launching collection, testing the market, iterating the approach.

Tier 2-3 brands have a higher margin of error to try new things. I.e. Wine, Fashion collaboration.

What is missing?

  • Infrastructure, strategy, storytelling, project management, commercial activation
  • 【1】Infrastructure: metaverse as a destination to realize gated access and utility for NFTs
  • 【2】Strategy: achieve short, mid and long term objectives to grow brand awareness with the right timing, chains, collection, partners, pricing
  • 【3】Storytelling: a good story retain audience, a great story creates strong world of mouth to turn participants to advocate
  • 【4】Project management: an experienced team to execute
  • 【5】Commercial activation: brands need to get positive ROI in an ongoing basis

This means throwing money at SuperBowl or Arena could be waste of money without proper way to convert and retain users in apecoin ecosystem. When the barrier for entry is high to enter the space, cost per user acquisition is high, being title sponsor might not be justified.

Case studies

  • The Sandbox Season 3 is a great example that fill the four points above, commercial activation can be improved with gated ticket sales. We only have alpha pass and wearable sales in Season 3.
  • For Apecoin, we have submitted an AIP to accelerate projects to guide projects to expand IP growth AIP-141: Ape Accelerator By ApeCoin

What can be improved from here

  • 【1】Launch of The Otherside: this enable gated access, gated content for commercial activation, co-development for both brands and builders. Otherside is a place where social, entertainment and utility value is realized. The chemistry effect brings fun experiences that attract players outside of yuga, apecoin community, where traditional web2 gamers, KOLs come here to play, have a good time, while getting themselves involved in with Otherside event. For example, Snoop Dogg’s private concerts.
  • 【2】Additional studios/creative guild involvement: who can turn stories into games, events. We have 55k metaverse labour force gap here, more labour is needed to grow the space together.
  • 【3】Industry win to inspire more brands to come to the space. 10ktf and Gucci’s success, punk and Tiffiany & Co instills confidence. FTX discourage a lot of brands to move forward. We need bigger brand wins with millions of dollars in sales for brands to attract more builders and brands to get involved.

What can we do to accelerate web3 IP adoption?

  1. Reach out to our web2 network. Any vertical that has relation to physical products.
  2. Find agency to get involved in casting calls. Boredjob is a good example.
  3. Create our own proposal. Set your term to negotiate with fashion, food, beverages and entertainment brands
  4. Get involved in sub-communities for lore development I.e. Mutant Cartel, identify brands that can add to its storyline like 10ktf
  5. Chat with founders who already working on these IP driven projects. See how we can help connecting lore and brand together. This is November Yuga IP list.
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Don’t like the idea very much, would just be like a marketing campaign with the chance to create more awareness, I would prefer to see funds spent on supporting more community based initiatives.

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While I love the potential doors this might open up in terms of exposure and visibility, the exorbitant costs associated with it cause the “finance side” of me to question the realizability of the return. I wonder what the financials for someone like, say, Overstock.com were like when they sponsored the Oakland Coliseum, both before and after the licensing deal. While it’s likely impossible to truly predict, we do have historical data that might shed some light as to the expected outcome of such a deal on an organization’s balance sheet. I would love to see that data.

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Getting ApeCoin branding on an arena would be cool but I just see it as a brand awareness play. What is the ROI for holders and the broader Otherside community? I think ApeCoin has a lot of brand awareness already. Time and money can be better spent elsewhere.

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Here is the Fee Schedule (contract years 1 through 19 are listed from the top down) of the FTX Naming rights agreement.

$14,000,000
$5,500,000
$5,500,000
$5,500,000
$6,000,000
$6,000,000
$6,000,000
$6,500,000
$6,500,000
$7,000,000
$7,000,000
$7,000,000
$7,000,000
$7,000,000
$7,500,000
$7,500,000
$7,500,000
$8,000,000

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Awesome, thank you so much!

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I think the one you saw was Bang Bros offering 10 mil which is more of a publicity stunt than anything bc the NBA would never allow a stadium to be named after an adult film company

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haha your right this is a crazy idea but def like it. Aside from it being fun marketing play I also think it will send a message that gives hope to the dark times that FTX created in our space. Like "we still here fam and we ain’t goin anywhere! "

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