I have written on the good and the bad of Quidd previously and my post this month will be again on Quidd. But this announcement confuses me for several reasons and feels like not the right thing for Quidd to be doing.

First, let’s look on a QPR fan site and see what their response is to this announcement. For example, fan’s networks QPR forum where users in the opening comments say “It's all a nonsense scam, and I'm disappointed to see QPR involved in this tosh.” And “Massive scam, worse than having an official betting partner”. So, I am not sure that they will be clambering to sign up to invest in these cards.

Secondly, let’s look at the current landscape, a popular betting site football index collapsed recently and its users have poured into NFT’s. Is this an attempt to get some of these whales? Maybe. But it’s a little late they have already moved onto Sorare. A product that has a few things that Quidd lacks.

Firstly, they have 215 clubs licensed, a lot more than the 1 that Quidd have. But they are also teams that you want like Liverpool and Real Madrid at the top of world football rather than a championship side. This makes packs more interesting you might get a rare version of a player you want, rather than already knowing it’s a QPR reserve player! Quidd are going to struggle to attract new teams in a similar way that all the good channels are moving to VeVe all top clubs will be on Sorare.

Secondly, Sorare has more utility for their NFT’s via their fantasy football contests which are much more of interest to ex-football index users than a random serial number leader board. The ups and downs of players and thus their values make trading happen as the cards potential to score points changes, without that they will sit in peoples accounts rather than being traded.

Thirdly, Sorare is actually on Ethereum blockchain rather than some vague promise that in the future the cards will be mintable. Quidd has already missed out on lots of promises to the community both regarding features (such as coins to cash conversion) to timescales (such as minting being available in Q2 2021). If I was investing any serious money, I would want that certainty of buying from a site that is actually on a chain! We just have to look at the announcement to see another broken promise, all new sets will have a coin second edition, this post confirms no second edition so no coin sales. People have and still do buy coins with real money and are being excluded from even a second edition.

So, the only group of users that possibly could be interested in this are the existing Quidd users. Quidd is prominently geared towards the American audience, they have a schedule to drop products only when the EU/UK are asleep. So they have a very limited number of users that are active in the UK. So will their US fans, who enjoy star trek and anime, know enough about soccer? Quidd is betting that they will be. Do the fans realise that QPR is not a good or popular team whose team sets sell for just a couple of quid? Quidd is betting that they don’t. But judging by the discord and the 16 people (tentatively I assume the new Quidd ambassadors have been asked to sign up to inflate the number) who are currently interested in the drop it doesn’t look like it's going to be a popular drop, even with a cash injection trying to drive purchases.

If Quidd were serious about going down this route they needed to copy the approach that they had to American sports, partner with a league and not just a random team. They should have started to move all the drops to a time of the day when the UK/EU are awake so they are still engaged with the app. They should have listened to their existing users and spent more time and resources fixing the issues with the app before making the drop. But let's see how this works out for them, hopefully, they have their whale on standby!

Edit 19/12/21 — Post drop

I have just been looking back at the cards on the market and they seem to be published by Animoca rather than the QPR football team as seen on the Publisher and legal parts of the info. If you compare this to a hello kitty card you see that it has the Sanrio (the owner’s of hello kitty) as the publisher. As a result when / if they are ever be minted they are not going to be truly signed by QPR and I think that this has a big impact on the value in the same way an ape not signed by the bored ape is just a jpeg.