Days after announcing a partnership with Coinbase and purchase of a plot of virtual land in The Sandbox, Adidas has shared details of its forthcoming collaboration with Bored Ape Yacht Club, Punks Comic, and influential NFT collector gmoney.
News of the clothing brand’s pivot to Web3 first surfaced on Sunday when Bored Ape Yacht Club, Punks Comic and gmoney all released teasers hinting at a partnership. Speculation about the brand’s entry into the space increased over the week, before a series of digital Adidas articles were unveiled via MetaHero, an NFT project by the team behind Punks Comic.
Now Adidas has confirmed more details of their plans. The company took to Twitter to kick off the partnership on Thursday, announcing it would dive “into the metaverse with @BoredApeYC, @gmoneyNFT & @punkscomic.” Adidas also hosted a Twitter Spaces call with a group of employees, a representative from the Bored Ape Yacht Club and gmoney as speakers. During the call, a team member asked several speakers to share their thoughts on what the metaverse means in a nutshell. They also referred to the tagline “Into The Metaverse,” which Adidas adopted as a Twitter hashtag, and invited listeners to participate in their social media posts and post reaction emojis during the call.
In a follow-up tweet, Adidas wrote that it was time to “step into a world of limitless possibilities” and shared a link to a dedicated Metaverse-themed landing page on its website. While details on the landing page are scarce, a note reads: “Adidas Originals travels through the metaverse, led by the pioneers of the NFT gmoney, the Bored Ape Yacht Club and PUNKS Comic. The page also features a QR code leading to CONFIRMED, the brand’s app providing early access to limited discounts. There is also a sign up bar to join the Adidas mailing list.
Interestingly, the company also revealed that it bought a bored monkey and is now using the character as a Twitter avatar. While the rest of the company’s plans for the Metaverse are still unclear, the latest updates suggest that it clearly intends to double down on the Web3 movement. One call employee discussed the “opportunity” the Metaverse may bring, while another revealed his plans had been in the works for five months.
Of course, Adidas isn’t the first big company to rush to join the Metaverse in recent weeks. In October, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would change its name to Meta, sparking a Metaverse frenzy in the cryptocurrency industry. KuCoin announced a $ 100 million Metaverse fund, while Solana Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and FTX also pledged a nine-figure sum to a Web3 gaming fund. Games like Decentraland and The Sandbox also outperformed almost the entire market in November. Grayscale, meanwhile, released a report setting a target of $ 1,000 billion on the value of the Metaverse last week.
Bored Ape Yacht Club has benefited from the growing interest in Metaverse, NFTs and Web3. The value of NFT Bored Ape has skyrocketed since the project began in April, with the cheapest currently around $ 200,000 in Ethereum in the secondary market. Several celebrities including Jimmy Fallon, Steph Curry and DJ Khaled have all joined the Bored Ape Yacht Club by buying their own monkeys. Like Adidas, they all used their Twitter avatars to show off their NFT purchases to their followers.
As big business and capital continue to pour into the space, it looks like the hype on Metaverse shows no signs of abating, at least while the market is still warm.
