August 5, 2022
The Tragedy of Foot 2022
This is probably the cleanest contemporaneous explanation I laid out of the problems we were seeing with the Foot 2022 release that really started the soccer craze on Panini Blockchain.
And, it wasn't available when I wrote this, but I did have the largest Foot 2022 collection by quite a lot which was no surprise to anyone involved.
As a Panini customer with one of the largest Foot 2022 collections on the platform (pretty sure I do have the most, but no way to confirm that), the way the Foot program has been handled is both notably terrible and indicative of the problems impacting the overall platform.
From the drop of the product, participants in the Panini Discord were lavished with promises of utility and features that would essentially make it a no-brainer to open as many of the $5 "crack packs" (as we affectionally called them) as we could. Sure, Ligue 1 wasn’t one of the top domestic competitions, but with some worldwide names and exciting prospects the checklist had a lot going for it.
It didn’t take long for Panini to start their "stepping in it" campaign to seemingly continuing to devalue their own product and the collections of those who believed in it. Early on, we learned that any decisions about the program had to be run through Panini France which had no experience with NFTs before. They did not plan to have any utility for these NFTs when they put the license together with UNFP (French player’s union–this was not Ligue 1 licensed), so challenges and rewards had to be approved after the fact.
Questions about transparency started early due to important information coming out through Discord questions and discussions rather than pushing of information from Panini. It seemed to be a policy of "the less they know the better" and that continued up until today which marks the conclusion of the utility phase of Foot 2022 with the minting of the "Mbappe & Friends" reward. This was the third rainbow challenge built around some of the year-end awards given out by UNFP. I have one of the three possible gold reward sets, which I believe entitles me to the Panini Elite Clown designation.
So went wrong? I could go on and on about that topic, but let me limit myself to a few key points:
Lack of planning for marketing campaigns, utility, and rewards
Not controlling the information shared through mods on the Panini Discord resulting in many unrealistic expectations by collectors
No timeline on features that were key to the value proposition of the massive Foot 2022 base mint and ultimately not delivering on features at all by the conclusion of the program (i.e., when there is active promotion and utility designed for the product)
Poor design of the checklist with a structure that made any kind of challenge difficult to construct had there been more than the middling interest we ended up with
Adding an unplanned "Transfer" release drop just as momentum was building in the marketplace for the original drop
Poor community interaction about the product from Panini–including, by the end of this program, outright trolling of the collectors by Panini representatives
Extremely inadequate marketing of the product and challenges
I would say that many of these points are consistent issues for any Panini NFT program based on my experience on the platform.
In future posts, I’ll dive into these issues and what I think Panini should do to resolve them or lessen their impact. In the meantime, enjoy the reward I’ve bestowed upon myself for the time and money spent on this once promising product line.
[Image of Elite Clown award created using the reward pieces]