AC Momento: Bringing Fans Direct Access To Their Favorite Athletes
AC Momento: Bringing Fans Direct Access To Their Favorite Athletes
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Hey Friends,
I’m pumped to announce my latest investment in Athletic Club Momento, a new company that wants to disrupt the multi-billion-dollar collectibles industry.
The business is officially launching today and has raised $20 million in capital from some of the best investors across sports and technology, including DIGITAL, The Raine Group, CASSIUS, Serena Ventures, and Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six.
Many of the company’s founding members have also invested, including Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry, Cesc Fàbregas, Toni Kroos, İlkay Gündoğan, Jack Grealish, César Azpilicueta, Ben Chilwell, Kieran Tierney, Dani Alves, Sergio Busquets, Sergi Roberto, Gerard Piqué, and Clément Lenglet.
But rather than using today’s newsletter to simply market a new investment, I want to spend our time breaking down why I think it’s a good idea and how the product is different than anything else on the market today. Let’s dig in.
The friction to enter financial markets has been significantly reduced over the last several years. With only 55% of American adults owning an investable asset, capitalism took over, and companies like Robinhood and FTX built multi-billion-dollar businesses by eliminating barriers to entry and reducing costs.
We know this. But this trend has also widened the investing scope beyond traditional financial assets. Stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities have always been relevant, but I’m talking about alternative investments — from fine art to multi-million-dollar sports cards.
Take sports collectibles, for example. That’s now a $4.14 billion market and is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of nearly ten percent between 2022 and 2032, according to Market Decipher.
We saw a Pele rookie card sell for $1.3 million earlier this year. A 1934 ticket from the very first Masters was sold privately for $600,000, and a record 1,000-plus unique sports collectibles will be sold this year for $100,000 or more.
But within collectibles, the most interesting segment is game-worn items.
It’s a growing category — there were 223% more six-figure game-worn/game-used sales in Q2 2022 than in Q2 2021, according to Altan Insights — but there is also a massive problem with authentication.
“In an environment where logomen and patches from unknown games (or even no games at all) drive card values to six and seven-figure sums, the clear invigoration in interest in true game-worn items may signify a sea-change, or at the very least a migration of dollars,” says Altan Insights.
In simple terms, people spend six and sometimes seven figures on cards that feature “game-worn” items, often without knowing what game or season it was from — if it was even game-worn at all!
So this is where AC Momento comes in. They want to upend the fragmented market of peer-to-peer auction platforms and marketplaces by partnering directly with clubs and football players to give fans direct access to game-worn items.
The business can be broken down into two parts: Auctions and Collections.
For auctions, AC Momento has partnered with several top Champions League clubs — including AC Milan, Atlético de Madrid, Sevilla FC, and SL Benfica — and they will run live, in-game auctions during select fixtures throughout the season.
These auctions will open at kick-off and go into a period of extending bidding after the final whistle. When a fan wins a shirt, a digital Certificate of Authenticity (dCOA) will be sent to their account while AC Momento secures the shirt directly from the dressing room for authentication and secure storage. Fans can then redeem their physical shirt within the app and have it sent to them anywhere in the world.
This will give fans an unprecedented opportunity to bid on the shirts players are wearing on the pitch—live during matches, straight from their mobile phones.
And the second component is collections.
Players have long been collectors — bringing their shirts home after matches or swapping with their rivals out of respect and admiration — but until now, their collections have primarily sat in the privacy of their homes.
So AC Momento has also developed a membership program for footballers to help them manage their personal memorabilia collections.
Players like Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry, Cesc Fàbregas, Toni Kroos, Vinícius Júnior, Jack Grealish, and many others will utilize AC Momento's storage facilities across Europe, have their shirts authenticated, photographed, and protected, and allow fans never before seen access to their personal collections — including the ability to submit private bids on items directly to the player.
This is something that has never been done before. Fans and collectors will now have direct access to their favorite players, game-worn memorabilia, real-time auctions, authentification, and secure storage all within one mobile application.
I think that will be incredibly valuable. So make sure to check out the Momento Market App today. Auctions are starting this weekend, and with many more big announcements to come, you won't want to miss this.
Ps. use “huddleup” as your early access code when downloading the app, and you will be able to skip the waitlist :)
I hope everyone has a great day. We’ll talk tomorrow.
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