Irish Players Club announces price for Notre Dame NFTs
After several weeks of build up and teasers about the new Irish Players Club, one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle was announced on Wednesday.
The project, which is being launched by Yoke and run by former Notre Dame football players Mick Assaf and Nic Weishar, along with Assaf’s older brother Hank, involves selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the form of leprechaun drawings.
The individual cost of each of the one-of-a-kind 5,555 leprechaun NFTs will be $200. Yoke will officially launch the operation on March 1, and 75 percent of the proceeds will be evenly split amongst all players on the Notre Dame football team who choose to opt into the project.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital assets which can be bought and sold just like other assets, similar to a digital trading card.
Additional IPC plans released last week
On Feb. 18, the group released a roadmap with details surrounding NFT purchases and access. Owners of a single IPC NFT earn membership to the club. Buying at least three NFTs will earn you a free merchandise bundle and buying five or more NFTs will earn you a player-signed NFT this summer. Finally, buying 10 IPC NFTs will result in a signed photo from Notre Dame running back Logan Diggs.
Diggs, along with numerous other players, have already been promoting the project on social media.
The biggest event on the books right now, and released with the roadmap on Feb. 18, are plans for the spring game weekend. The game will take place on April 23, and Yoke will host both a members-only tailgate ahead of the game as well as a members-only postgame meet-and-greet with players. Other spring events will include various activities on Discord, an online social channel similar to a large group chat with a multitude of features.
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How did the ‘Irish Players Club’ come about?
The project started in its initial form just prior to the onset of the NIL era last summer. The Assaf brothers and Weishar launched Yoke, a platform on which fans can play video games with their favorite college athletes.
Yoke had 15,000 college athletes sign up for the platform the day the new rules went into effect on July 1, 2021. Shortly thereafter, they put together a series of marketing deals with several companies, including DirecTV and a chicken wing company called It’s Just Wings. As they learned more about how athletes and fans were utilizing NIL, they came up with a new idea.
“We started to realize that the reality is all these brands want to do NIL stuff, but the real demand is actually coming from fans who want to support players,” Assaf said. “So we found that the best way for fans to directly support players was through NFTs.”
Of note, many high-level Power Five football programs have created NIL collectives in recent months, while Notre Dame does not yet have an organized way in which to support their football team under the new NIL rules. Yoke is hoping to change that through this alternative to an NIL collective.
